JOURNAL SPORTS
LSU fans at Tiger Stadium this season spoke up, and have been heard.
However, three times this fall, local LSU fans will not hear their coach where they’ve listened for years. They’ll have to rely on a secondary source to listen to the weekly radio show featuring new LSU coach Brian Kelly.
TAILGATING: There are 102,321 seats in Tiger Stadium and during any home game, there are tens of thousands of people, including many LSU fans, tailgating outside. Before pre-game warmups, they’re all around the stadium, often looking for bathrooms and shelter and air conditioning.
LSU Athletics has taken a logical step, as the result of a fan survey, to address tailgating comfort. Athletics director Scott Woodward recently announced the Pete Maravich Assembly Center will be open to the public to use restrooms and seek relief from the weather.
Beginning five hours before an evening kickoff, the PMAC will be open with live telecasts of other games shown on the video board inside. The Tiger Band will perform in the PMAC after the Victory Hill parade, he said.
No plans were announced for use of the PMAC before day games, however.
BYRD FOOTBALL 3, THE BRIAN KELLY SHOW 0: New Tigers football coach Brian Kelly has made sweeping changes in the program, and one created a quandary for Townsquare Media, the radio group that airs LSU sports on KWKH 1130 “The Tiger” locally.
For many years, the LSU coach’s radio show was broadcast on Wednesday during the season, but Kelly decided it best fit his schedule to do the show on Thursday nights (so don’t expect to see him at Thursday night prep games).
One other mainstay of 1130 The Tiger’s fall broadcast slate for many years has been game broadcasts of C.E. Byrd football games. Every season, the Yellow Jackets play a few times on Thursday nights – three times this fall, to be exact, in the regular season. Never a conflict – until now.
That presented a miserable dilemma for Townsquare: forgo coverage of Kelly’s show, or those three Yellow Jacket game broadcasts?
The Charlie Cavell-led Byrd broadcasts got the nod on the three “conflict” dates of Sept. 15, Sept. 22, and Oct. 20. There won’t be a Kelly Show on 1130 AM the Tiger those nights, nor will there be a Talkin’ Tiger Football show with our own Tony Taglavore.
His locally-based show has aired in the hour following the LSU coach’s show, on Wednesdays. Now it shifts to Thursday nights – except when Byrd is playing.
Kelly’s first show is Aug. 25. Talkin’ Tiger Football begins after the Sept. 1 Kelly show.
Photo by GUS STARK, LSU Athletics