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It’s been around a decade since a live tiger graced the sidelines at an LSU football game, and it appears the governor of Louisiana is now pushing for that controversial tradition to return shortly after the program spurned another request involving the national anthem.
The LSU Tigers adopted their nickname in 1896 (one inspired by the moniker given to troops from Louisiana who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War), and in 1935, students pooled together $750 to adopt a real, actual tiger cub from a petting zoo in Arkansas who was dubbed “Mike.”
That marked the first of a string of live tigers that have resided on the Baton Rouge campus since then, and the various Mikes were routinely transported to the field for home and away games for decades until that tradition was officially discontinued when the current mascot (Mike VII) was donated to the university in 2017 two years after the death of his predecessor.
Mike VI was the last live mascot to hop into a cage on a trailer before making the trek from his $3 million habitat next to Tiger Stadium to a football game (a contest with LSU-McNeese that was called off due to inclement weather in 2015), as the university announced every big cat obtained in the wake of his passing will permanently reside in that 15,000-square-foot enclosure due to the stress of the stadium environment.
However, the Louisiana Illuminator reports the dean of LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine recently sat down with Governor Jeff Landry and three state officials with backgrounds in that particular field for a meeting where the visiting delegation reportedly floated the idea of resurrecting the discontinued tradition.
That news surfaced around a week after the same outlet confirmed LSU had rebuked Landry’s request to have members of the football team present on the field when the national anthem is played, and a spokesperson for the school quickly shut down the notion of the current mascot staging a grand return to the field, saying:
“LSU will not bring Mike VII to the Nicholls game and is not in discussions to bring Mike to any games this season.”
State Representative Wayne McMahen (a graduate of LSU’s veterinary school) was one of the members of the trio that joined Landry in the meeting and said he agreed with the decision to maintain the status quo while suggesting the request stemmed from a wealthy donor who’d lobbied the governor to float the possibility.
There are a number of schools that still incorporate live animals into their gameday routine–including Colorado (Ralphie the Buffalo), Oklahoma (the Sooner Schooner), and Auburn (the War Eagle)—but it doesn’t sound like LSU will be getting back into the fold.