Power restored! Tigers clear big hurdle

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Sep 6, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Recovery took a major step forward on LSU’s campus Thursday night, giving officials in the athletic department cause for guarded optimism that the next home football game will be go on as scheduled.

Just in case, though, preliminary steps have been taken to make sure the Tigers get on the football field against North Texas somewhere next weekend. In fact, senior associate athletic director Herb Vincent said Friday the possibility exists of shifting the game to the Superdome or to Texas Stadium in Irving.

Power was restored to campus at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, tentatively clearing the biggest hurdle LSU faced in terms of staging a football game Sept. 13 when the Tigers are slated to entertain North Texas at 7 p.m.

LSU’s home game with Troy, originally scheduled for 7 p.m. today, was postponed until Nov. 15 because of damage to Tiger Stadium and pervasive power outages in the Baton Rouge area.

Vincent said Friday there are a series of tests that need to be run on the lighting system, scoreboard and public address system at Tiger Stadium.

“That’s the only thing we haven’t been able to work through yet,” Vincent said. “Once we’re able to do that and see if what power capabilities we have, we’ll be able to talk about our options.”

Besides the electricity concerns, work has started on much of the damage the 84-year-old stadium sustained Monday during Hurricane Gustav.

Vincent said an LSU facilities crew spent much of the last three days cleaning debris from the stadium and playing surface and removing the tattered tarps from above the 200- and 300-level club seating that were torn during the storm. Workers have also made progress on mending the dozens of seats that were dinged.

Associate Athletic Director for Facilities and Grounds Ronnie Haliburton said Wednesday that he was confident his crew would have the stadium and playing surface playable.

“Without a doubt,” Haliburton said. “We’ll work as hard as we need to work to make sure we can play football here as soon as possible.”

While getting the stadium playable is on its way to completion, other factors will also be weighed between now and the middle of next week, when a final decision will need to be made about the North Texas game.

About 69 percent of East Baton Rouge Parish was without power Friday and estimates from the local electrical utilities are it could be weeks before the area is up to full power.

Even more daunting, some of the latest projections of Hurricane Ike indicate that it could wander into the Gulf of Mexico.