Go to the bars around campus on Friday night and follow everyone over to the stadium for midnight yell practice.
Will do. I had asked for instructions on yell practice, thinking it was held indoors.
I see you have been to a game in Baton Rouge - that is a place on my football bucket list.
One of the more unique places I've been.
I'll tell my story, again, as I love to hear my lips flap.
Two hours prior to kickoff, my posse and I are driving in, with a 20-something doing the driving for the old folks. I tell him to just drive toward the stadium (per the Garmin) until he sees someone holding a sign for pay/parking. There is no traffic at lights on two lane streets that resemble the streets of Danville, Kentucky. I assume we are a long way from the stadium, so I lean my seat back and close my eyes.
Five minutes later, we hit a red light, and are the only car at the light. I hear the Garmin say, "Take a left onto Stadium Drive." I straighten my seat, look to the left, and see the rear end of the UK team bus 150 feet within the stadium chained-link fence. The Garmin had directed us to enter the damn stadium gate!!
We take a right and park at a grade school, and their little league coaches are operating a mini-bus service back the 5 blocks or so to the stadium.
I hop out of the mini-bus at the stadium and approach a uniformed officer and ask him "where is all the traffic." We are standing
in the middle of a deserted street 100 feet from a stadium gate."
He looks confused for a second, repeating part of my question to himself . . . "all of the traffic?" And then he says, "oh, are you talking about traffic for
the game?" I say, "uh, yes," and he says "oh, they all get here the night before, or early the morning of the game. There has been no traffic to speak of on these streets for hours, now."
The student body sits in the single deck end zone seats, I think, in the western end of the stadium. It is
steep. I think it is the steepest portion of a stadium I have ever seen . . . . like a human wall. The "Golden Girls" are about a third of the way up, maybe on a little platform.
Mid-way of the third Q, one of the friendly fans (they were all pretty nice) tells me to take a glance at the student body . . . . and all that is left is a smattering of a few hundred, and the Golden Girls, kind of abandoned. So he tells me that is typical. I say, "but if we were Bama and giving you a good game, they would still be here," and he shakes his head "no," and smiles, and says that is simply a tradition for the SB to head home at the half???
I have been to, what, 20 major stadiums, and LSU is the only one I have seen without a traffic jam, 2 hours before kickoff . . . . The locals will tell you the story explaining why there are little windows on the exterior of the stadium walls . . . . Huey Long got a bill passed in the thirties to built "classrooms," but one side of the "classroom" building was sloped to allow football seating . . . . They are still there, but are empty, and no longer used for classes.