48 Fun Facts About LSU

Which LSU defensive back, a 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist, was nicknamed the 'Honey Badger'?

Tyrann Mathieu earned the name for fearless play against far bigger opponents and for a dyed-blond patch in his hair; as a sophomore he finished fifth in the Heisman voting.

Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2023?

Jayden Daniels won the 2023 Heisman Trophy, throwing 40 touchdown passes and rushing for 1,134 yards in his second season at LSU after transferring from Arizona State.

What is the nickname of LSU's Tiger Stadium?

Death Valley is at its loudest after dark: LSU has played most of its home games at night since 1931, and it wins a clearly higher share of them than of its day games.

LSU clinched its 2003, 2007 and 2019 national titles in which stadium?

The Superdome in New Orleans, about 80 miles from campus, hosted all three title games, so LSU has never had to leave Louisiana to win a BCS or playoff championship.

Which LSU quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 2019?

Joe Burrow came to LSU in 2018 as a graduate transfer after two seasons as a backup elsewhere, then won the 2019 Heisman by 1,846 points, a record margin at the time.

Who was LSU's first Heisman Trophy winner, in 1959?

Billy Cannon won the 1959 Heisman Trophy, the same autumn his 89-yard punt return on Halloween night beat No. 3 Ole Miss 7-3 in Tiger Stadium.

Which coach led LSU baseball to College World Series titles in 2023 and 2025?

Jay Johnson left Arizona for LSU in 2021 and won the College World Series in his second and fourth seasons, the program's seventh and eighth titles.

Which Civil War general was LSU's first superintendent when the school opened in 1860?

William Tecumseh Sherman resigned in early 1861 as Louisiana left the Union, yet after the war he gave LSU two cannons that had fired on Fort Sumter.

By legend, why did LSU adopt purple and gold in 1893?

A store had no green ribbon, the story goes: players shopping before LSU's first football game found Mardi Gras stock in purple and gold only, and bought it all.

As of 2025, Tiger Stadium's 102,321 seats rank second in the SEC behind which school's stadium?

Texas A&M's Kyle Field seats 102,733, only about 400 more; Tiger Stadium passed 100,000 when a 2014 south end-zone expansion added nearly 10,000 seats.

Which coach led LSU to its 2003 national championship, the school's first in 45 years?

Nick Saban, hired from Michigan State in late 1999, won the 2003 BCS title with a 21-14 Sugar Bowl win over Oklahoma, then left for the Miami Dolphins after the 2004 season.

Which coach's second-string 1958 defensive unit was nicknamed the 'Chinese Bandits'?

Paul Dietzel's three-platoon system rotated whole units: the White Team, the Go Team and the Chinese Bandits, whose third-down stops helped LSU go 11-0 and win the 1958 national title.

LSU's 1988 'Earthquake Game', when the crowd's roar registered on a campus seismograph, was a 7-6 win over which rival?

Auburn led 6-0 until Tommy Hodson found Eddie Fuller on fourth down with under two minutes left; the roar that followed showed up on a seismograph in LSU's geology department.

LSU beat which SEC opponent in 2002 on a tipped desperation pass caught for a touchdown as time expired?

Kentucky's players had already doused their coach with Gatorade when Marcus Randall's heave was tipped to Devery Henderson, who scored; the play is known as the Bluegrass Miracle.

Which LSU guard averaged 44.2 points a game over three varsity seasons from 1967 to 1970?

Pete Maravich scored 3,667 points at LSU from 1967 to 1970, averaging 44.2 a game with no three-point line or shot clock; his men's record stood when Caitlin Clark passed the overall mark in 2024.

LSU's 2023 women's basketball national title came with a 102-85 win over which team?

Iowa had just ended top-ranked South Carolina's unbeaten season in the semifinal, but LSU's 102 points were the most any team had scored in a women's title game.

Who coached LSU's women's basketball team to its 2023 national championship?

Kim Mulkey left Baylor, where she had won three national titles, for LSU in 2021 and delivered the program's first championship in only her second season.

In 2024, LSU won its first national team title in which women's sport?

Gymnastics: LSU trailed Utah going into its final event, then posted a record beam score, sealed by Aleah Finnegan's closing 9.95.

Whose walk-off home run beat Miami 9-8 to win LSU the 1996 College World Series?

Warren Morris had missed most of the season with a broken bone in his hand; with two outs in the ninth he lined the first pitch just over the right-field fence, his only home run of the year.

Which coach won five national titles with LSU baseball between 1991 and 2000?

Skip Bertman, a Miami assistant, took over an LSU program in 1984 that had never reached the College World Series; it got there in his third season and won five titles in ten years.

Where does LSU play its home baseball games?

Alex Box Stadium honours Simeon Alex Box, an LSU letterman killed in North Africa in the Second World War; the name carried over when a new ballpark replaced the original in 2009.

Which two LSU teammates went first and second in the 2023 MLB draft?

Paul Skenes, a transfer from Air Force, went first to Pittsburgh and Dylan Crews second to Washington, weeks after the pair had won the College World Series together.

Which pitcher was the first LSU player taken first overall in the MLB draft, in 1989?

Ben McDonald, fresh from Olympic gold in Seoul, went first overall to Baltimore in June 1989 and was pitching in the major leagues by that September.

Which opponent did LSU beat 56-0 in its first game outside the United States, in 1907?

LSU beat the University of Havana 56-0 on Christmas Day 1907 in Havana, Cuba, in a game later remembered as the first Bacardi Bowl.

How was the first Mike the Tiger paid for in 1936?

Twenty-five cents collected from each student raised $750, enough to buy a year-old tiger called Sheik from the Little Rock Zoo; he was renamed Mike on arrival.

Which rival school's fans kidnapped Mike I in the 1950s and returned him sprayed green?

Tulane fans took Mike I before the rivals' game; he turned up safe in New Orleans, he and his cage sprayed in Tulane's green.

How did LSU's tiger Mike IV get loose on campus one night in 1981?

Pranksters cut his cage locks before dawn on November 28; Mike IV roamed for hours, attacked a small tree and was cornered in the track stadium, where three tranquilizer shots ended the outing.

By legend, what did Huey Long order built beneath Tiger Stadium's stands so that state money would cover new seats?

Dormitories went under the stands in 1931 because the budget covered student housing but not seats; athletic director Skipper Heard is credited with the idea, and about 1,500 students lived there.

Which sprinter won the 2019 NCAA 100 metres title as an LSU freshman in a collegiate-record 10.75 seconds?

Sha'Carri Richardson turned professional within days of that race, ending her college career after a single season; four years later she was the 100 metres world champion.

'Callin' Baton Rouge', the singalong before LSU home games, is best known in a 1993 recording by which country star?

Garth Brooks did not write it or record it first: the Oak Ridge Boys cut it in 1978. When he sang it in Tiger Stadium in 2022, the crowd's roar registered on a campus seismograph.

The 'Geaux' in 'Geaux Tigers' comes from a spelling common in what?

'Geaux' borrows the -eaux ending of Cajun French surnames such as Boudreaux and Thibodeaux, so it is pronounced 'go.'

Which LSU star was twice SEC Player of the Year before going first overall in the NBA draft?

Shaquille O'Neal left LSU a year early for the 1992 draft, then came back to finish his bachelor's degree in 2000 while he was starring for the Los Angeles Lakers.

LSU's basketball arena was turned into what in the days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005?

A field hospital: with New Orleans hospitals knocked out, the arena beside Tiger Stadium became the region's medical hub for storm evacuees, staffed largely by volunteers.

Which LSU running back set the school's single-season rushing record with 1,953 yards in 2015?

Leonard Fournette was the presumed Heisman front-runner until Alabama held him to 31 yards on 19 carries; he still finished with a school-record 1,953 and came sixth in the vote.

Which pole vault world-record holder competed for LSU for one season in 2019 before turning professional?

Armand 'Mondo' Duplantis grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, but vaults for Sweden, his mother's country; he first broke the world record in 2020, months after leaving LSU.

LSU's 'Tigers' nickname, adopted in 1896, was reputedly taken from what?

A Louisiana Civil War infantry unit, the Tiger Rifles, gave its nickname to all of the state's troops in Virginia; LSU's unbeaten 1896 team is said to have borrowed it.

LSU's 2019 championship team was known for which two 1,000-yard wide receivers?

Ja'Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson combined for 3,320 yards in 2019; Chase later rejoined his LSU quarterback in Cincinnati, and Jefferson was the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year in 2022.

LSU's 2019 Heisman winner threw a then-record 60 touchdown passes after transferring from which school?

Ohio State kept him on the bench for two seasons, so he left as a graduate transfer in 2018; a year later his 60 touchdown passes broke Colt Brennan's FBS record of 58.

Which coach was hired from Oklahoma State in January 2005 and won LSU's 2007 national title?

Les Miles had a rough welcome: Hurricane Katrina turned his LSU debut in 2005 from a home game into a trip to Arizona State's stadium, yet two seasons later his Tigers won the BCS title despite two losses.

Under what name did LSU open in 1860?

LSU opened in 1860 near Pineville as the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy; it took the Louisiana State University name in 1870 and absorbed the state's A&M college in 1877.

Roughly 1,200 of which tree shade the LSU campus?

Live oak: the spreading trees so define the campus that LSU's official pictorial history is titled Under Stately Oaks.

What are the two 20-foot grassy hills that LSU fences off on football game days?

Native American mounds: a 2022 LSU-led study dated the older one to about 11,000 years, which its authors said makes the pair the oldest surviving man-made structures in the Americas.

Which Democratic strategist, nicknamed the 'Ragin' Cajun', earned both of his degrees at LSU?

James Carville first left LSU without graduating and joined the Marines, then came back for a bachelor's and a law degree before running Bill Clinton's winning 1992 campaign.

LSU's first live tiger, bought in 1936, was named Mike after which campus figure?

The athletic trainer, Mike Chambers, did more than anyone to bring a tiger to campus, so the cub, sold under the name Sheik, was renamed in his honour.

What is the name of LSU's student newspaper, first published in 1887?

The Reveille made national news in 1934, when seven student journalists, the 'Reveille Seven,' were expelled at Huey Long's behest for printing a letter against him and refusing faculty censorship.

LSU's main campus buildings are built in the style of which Italian Renaissance architect?

Andrea Palladio's 16th-century villas were the model for architect Theodore Link's campus plan; Link died in 1923 with the work unfinished, so a New Orleans firm completed it.

Which Oscar-winning actress, later married to Paul Newman, majored in drama at LSU?

Joanne Woodward left LSU for the New York stage, began as an understudy on Broadway, and within a few years had won the Best Actress Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve.

Because of its military-academy origins, LSU is nicknamed what?

The Ole War Skule kept its military habits for over a century: after opening as an academy in 1860, LSU made ROTC compulsory for freshmen and sophomores until 1969.