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I was given the day off today and it was raining (just another day in freakin paradise) so I thought that it would be nice to make sure everybody was well informed about the history and tradition that is LSU football....

 Louisiana State University was established in 1860 and that same year a lot of forest in Baton Rouge was leveled in order to make room for LSU's campus. Several students saw how flat the campus was and thought it was missing something, so they planted several Spanish moss trees around the LSU campus and still today, most of those trees still stand....

In 1893 appointed Charles Coates to build a football team for LSU and appoint the team a nickname and team colors. Charle's father fought in the civil war in an elite group of solider's called the fighting tigers, and the confederation would just let these guys roam around Louisiana and kill everything they saw linked to the union, they were known all around as the fiercest soliders in all of the United States. They were basically the united states version of Attila and the Huns. So Charles decided to name them the fighting Tigers.

Then all Charles had left to find was LSU's school colors. Now Charles thought, what was Louisiana known for and of course the first thing that came to mind was Mardi Gras and Mardi Gras's colors are Purple, Gold, and green, so he decided to make those the school colors. So he went to the supply store to by material to make LSU's jersey's and they were out of green, so he cut out the green and decided to make LSU's school colors purple and gold.

LSU played there first game in school history against Tulane in which Tulane won 34-0. This match up went on to become LSU's primary in-state rivalry and a little known fact is that Tulane actually dominated the first 40 years of this in-state rivalry, it wasn't until the thirty's until LSU beat Tulane in consecutive seasons...

After the 1893 season LSU went onto become the perennial powerhouse of the SIAA conference up until the 1908 season in which LSU not only dominated the SIAA conference but also the rest of the country, tae a look at what they did to the opposition,

 YMGC-New Orleans W 41-0  Jackson Barracks W 81-5  Texas A&M W 26-0  Southwestern Tennessee W 55-0  at Auburn W 10-2  Mississippi State W 50-0  Baylor W 89-0  vs. Haskell W 32-0  at Louisiana Tech W 22-0  at Arkansas W 36-4

Talk about a lights out defense, LSU shut out 7 out of there 10 opponents, and the most points they allowed in a game was 5. The NCF (National Champions Foundation) awarded LSU with the National Championship. This season was the first of many great seasons...

In 1924 LSU opened LSU Tiger Stadium A.K.A. Death Vally, it originally seated a little under 10,000 people and was actually equipped with dorm rooms inside of the stadium, which stayed there until the late 80's. On the opening day of the stadium LSU defeated Spring Hill 35-0.

LSU posted consistent 7-9 win seasons (give or take a little) until the late 1950's when most of LSU's great traditions were born...

The father of most of these tradition I speak off was Paul Deizal, he became the head coach at LSU in 1955 , it was his first head coaching job.

First thing Deizal did was separate the team into three section, While Team and Go Team were the offense and then the Chinese Bandits were the penical of great defenses. The Chinese Bandits actually coined the phrase lights out defense when in a game against Texas A&M the lights went out in the end zone in the 4th quarter and LSU held Texas A&M 4 downs inside of the 5 yard line in the dark. LSU still pays tribute to the Bandits with a song from the band every time LSU makes a defensive stop.

In 1958 LSU started the season unranked by every poll in college football and steadily worked there way up the polls after they won game after game as they worked there way up from unranked all the way to number 1 in only 6 weeks, they ended up beating Clemson in the Sugar Bowl and winning the first National Championship for the school in the AP poll era...

Some of Deizal's tradition still are around, for example, LSU is notable as one of the few college football teams that wears white jerseys for home games as opposed to their darker jerseys (in their case, purple). Most other NCAA football teams wear their darker jerseys in home games, even though football is one of the few college sports that do not require a specific jersey type for each respective team (unlike college basketball, which requires home teams to wear white or light-colored jerseys while the away team wears their darker jerseys), and is similar to the NFL in letting the home team decide what to wear. Georgia Tech is one of the few exceptions to this rule. The tradition started in 1958, when Coach Paul Dietzel decided that LSU would wear white jerseys for the home games. LSU went on to win the national championship that year. Since then, LSU continued to wear white jerseys at home games.

Then in 1982, new NCAA rules prohibited teams from wearing white jerseys at home. Because of this, LSU wore purple jerseys during home games from 1983 to 1994. In 1995, LSU's new coach, Gerry DiNardo, was determined to restore LSU's tradition of white home jerseys. DiNardo personally met with each member of the NCAA Football Rules Committee, lobbying LSU's case. DiNardo was successful, and LSU again began wearing white jerseys at home when the 1995 season began. In LSU's first home game with the white jerseys, unranked LSU prevailed in a 12-6 upset victory over #6 Auburn. In 2000, LSU's new coach, Nick Saban, altered the tradition of the white home jersey.

now LSU only wears white jerseys for the home opener and for home games against SEC opponents. For non-SEC home games other than the home opener, LSU wears purple jerseys at home.

In 1959 Billy Cannon had an unbelievable season in which he won the Heisman and was a first team all-American, but believe it or not the Heisman isn't what his season was most remembered for, Late on Halloween night LSU was down by 5 with 12 seconds left on the clock. LSU forced Ole Miss to punt and even though Billy was taught to never field the ball inside the 20 yards line he did anyway's and returned the balls 89 yards for a touchdown, the picture above Captures the unbelievable run and this is the most memorable picture in all of LSU athletics...