Tiger Stadium’s purple haze atmosphere

Published 11:47 am Sunday, October 11, 2015

BATON ROUGE — So you want LSU football games without the weekend-long traffic snarls and knotted clusters?

Pretty simple.

Just don’t tell anybody there’s a game planned until Wednesday.

Problem solved.

But I’m not sure that’s the answer.

Something sure was missing here besides the traffic Saturday afternoon.

Apparently LSU’s 45-24 win over South Carolina will count, like, in the SEC standings, the meaningless polls, the Heisman ballot and whatever the College Football Playoff wants to make of it.

But good luck with that.

Danged if I could figure it out.

Never mind that it didn’t much feel like an LSU football game.

Apparently there’s something to be said for some of the accompanying pomp and circumstance, maybe even the clandestine bourbon.

Saturday certainly didn’t have the aura or even the aroma of a Southeastern Conference football game.

Maybe the Red Cross could appreciate it more than the sparse gathering of purple and gold did Saturday afternoon. It was billed as a telethon, after all, just an excuse to help out the good people of South Carolina and all that flooding back home that forced the Gamecocks to relocate what was supposed to be its own home festivities here.

There had been idle talk, never serious apparently, of a neutral site for this affair.

Instead, they chose a surreal one, giving bits and hints of Tiger Stadium.

But those of us who know Tiger Stadium know that wasn’t quite it. Something was missing beyond about 60,000 of the usual 102,000 in the congregation.

You knew this was a different day when ol’ Darth Visor, Head Ball Coach Steve Spurrier’s image, was up there on the jumbo screen just before kickoff, exhorting that, “Now’s the time for Carolina football!”

And not a single Tiger fan booed him.

That was your tip off.

Then some LSU students gave some stray counterparts from South Carolina the “keys to Tiger Stadium.”

Most of the other parting gifts the Tigers had for the Gamecocks were special-teams related, but surely they were greatly appreciated.

So, yes, this was a parallel universe disguised as Tiger Stadium.

Tiger Stadium playing nice.

LSU football doesn’t get to wear the white hat very often, which was part of the confusion Saturday, along with the white britches that the Tigers sported (which actually didn’t look too bad compared to other “alternative” silliness Nike can come up with).

It just didn’t look like LSU.

Or the SEC.

It looked like they shipped this one somewhere out to Big 12 country and faked one of those silly pop-gun affairs. Maybe it was a movie set, like when they faked the moon landing and all.

LSU had 624 yards of offense — 6 yards shy of the most in recorded history for the Tigers in an SEC game — and they really didn’t get into a groove until the second half.

Leonard Fournette had his career-long run, an 87-yarder that’s been shipped to the Heisman committee, and he didn’t even lead the Tigers in rushing.

Fournette had a season-low 158 and yet the Tigers ran for 396 while Fournette got his long promised R&R over the final 25 minutes.

The next in line, freshman Derrius Guice, trumped him with 161 yards, including a 25-yarder where the style points topped anything Fournette did, even that sprint from 87 yards out.

And are you sitting down?

Brandon Harris threw for 228 yards and it didn’t even seem like he had to go 18 of 28 to do it.

Hallelujah, it can be done … only needed one lucky break.

Shoot, Travin Dural had 109 yards receiving all by himself.

And that was with the usual shutdown of all air thoughts for the fourth quarter.

LSU spent the day steady scoring touchdowns and then, seemingly, auditioning people in the stands to come perform a proper kickoff and hopefully make a tackle while chasing it.

With 624 yards and six touchdowns to choose from, by far the loudest roar of the day came late when the Tigers finally quit the kickoff gimmicks, put one in the fairway and somebody went down and made the tackle right at the 25-yard line.

There appeared to be some sarcasm in the cheer.

After all, that was about the only thing that seemed to keep things close.

It was just a strange day all around.

But, gosh, the traffic was nice.