Nothing like Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night

• By SCOTT RABALAIS
• Advocate Sports Writer
• Published: Dec 30, 2005

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Things that go thump in the night.

In Baton Rouge it's nothing to be scared about ... unless you're the visiting team in Tiger Stadium.

The thump ... thump ... thump of the base drum signals the cadence for LSU's Golden Band from Tigerland to take the field.

What happens next on seven Saturday's in the fall is the stuff of legend. Except in the case of Tiger Stadium, most of the legends are true.

True: Being in Tiger Stadium can be louder than being on a runway at Metro Airport when an airliner takes off.

True: Fans in Tiger Stadium have been known to move the earth, as they did in 1988 when their reaction to a game-winning touchdown pass against Auburn set the seismograph across campus in the geology department rocking as though it was recording some serious seismic disturbance.

True: Mike V, LSU's live Bengal Tiger mascot, prowls the sidelines in Tiger Stadium and emits the occasional intimidating roar, though it is from behind iron bars in his portable cage.

False: It never rains in Tiger Stadium. The last two season openers have been delayed by monsoon-type rain. Any claims to the contrary probably come from someone who was too inebriated to remember.

Two things it's not good to be in and around Tiger Stadium: an opposing team or a mixed drink. Both of them tend to get swallowed up, though last season marked the first time LSU went 7-0 at home since 1972.

Tiger fans always expect big things from their football team. This season -- two years removed from the 2003 BCS national championship, LSU's second national title -- expectations are great, indeed.

Even the fact that LSU lost its much-lauded coach Nick Saban to the Miami Dolphins and hired Les Miles as his replacement, a man who -- gasp! -- has never been to a game in Tiger Stadium before, does little to diminish the fervor.

Ninety-two thousand fans will jam themselves into Tiger Stadium this fall -- once the new west upper deck is finished, that is -- making themselves at once the fifth-largest population base in Louisiana and the loudest outside New Orleans at Mardi Gras.

If you do nothing else between now and Christmas, vow to take in a game there, at least one. No one can truly say they know Baton Rouge, or Louisiana for that matter, until they have attended a night game in Tiger Stadium in all its sweaty, bourbon-infused, ear-splitting splendor.