When the anthem is played before LSU football games this year, plenty of pageantry will be on the field, but you won’t find the LSU Tigers.
LSU announced this week that it will not change its long-standing pregame routine, in which the team remains in the locker room during the anthem. This is despite a call from Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R) to have players on the field during the playing of the Star-Spangles Banner.
“There will not be any changes to our pregame football processes this season,” LSU Athletics Spokesman Zach Greenwell told the Louisiana Illuminator via WBZR.
The issue of having players present for the anthem came to the fore earlier this year when observers noted that the LSU women’s basketball team was not on the floor during the anthem before their playoff tilt against Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Iowa, however, was on the floor for the anthem. They were giving the nation a visual that looked bad for the Tigers and got the attention of Governor Landry.
“It is time that all college boards, including Regent [sic], put a policy in place that student athletes be present for the national anthem or risk their athletic scholarship! This is a matter of respect that all collegiate coaches should instill,” Landry wrote on X.
According to WBZR, “The Tigers’ pregame routine today is largely the same as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Fifteen minutes before kick-off, LSU’s ‘Golden Band from Tigerland’ lines up in the stadium’s south end zone. The band takes to the field to perform ‘Tiger Rag,’ an old jazz standard adopted by the university, before playing the alma mater and, finally, the national anthem.”
It’s only after all this that the team takes the field.
Some felt the policy could be changed after LSU Athletic Director Scott Woodward said the school “routinely reviews” its policies and would, in this case as well, after Landry’s social media post.
However, after the outrage at the Women’s Final Four dissipated, the university declined to make any changes.
