When LSU students file into the Cox Auditorium for a lecture, few of them realize they are stepping foot on what was once a basketball court.
Players from the earliest incarnations of the LSU basketball team played in the same building when it was called the Huey Long Field House Gym Armory.
This was before the basketball team moved to the John M. Parker Agricultural Center, better known as the “Cow Palace”, where Pete Maravich graced the court.
Now, the LSU basketball team plays at the PMAC, which some call the “House that Pete Built,” despite Maravich never playing there while in college and only once as a pro.
But the basketball team isn’t the only LSU athletic team that has been nomadic through the years.
Before the LSU swimming and diving team made their home at the LSU Natatorium, where they have been for the past 27 seasons, the team trained at the Huey P. Long Field House Pool.
The pool, completed in 1932, was 180 feet long and 48 feet wide – the largest pool at any college or university in the country at the time.
Not all sports teams at LSU have moved around campus, though.
Tiger Stadium opened in 1924 with a capacity of 12,000. For comparison, the stadium expanded in 2000 and 11,600 seats were added.
While the stadium hasn’t changed locations for 88 years, the original layout wouldn’t be recognizable to most LSU football faithful today.
For former LSU football player Tommy Casanova, the Tiger Stadium of the late ’60s and early ’70s is the one he’ll always remember with fondness.
“To tell you the truth, I like the old style better,” Casanova said. “I don’t dislike [the renovations]. The old stadium just had a little bit more romance to it.”
Tiger Stadium has always found a way to grow. When the state budget wouldn’t allow money for a seating expansion, but rather allocated money for dormitories, Gov. Huey P. Long decided he would build a residential hall – inside the stadium. By adding dormitories in the stadium, he could add more seats on top of the dorm rooms.
Tiger Stadium now stands as the eighth-largest on-campus college football stadium.
The last 10 years have been some of the most dramatic in terms of updates to LSU athletic facilities.
Tiger Stadium has even gone electronic in its evolution, adding an 80-foot wide, 27-foot high-definition video screen to the north end zone of Tiger Stadium in 2009.
Despite all the construction, Casanova said his favorite part of Tiger Stadium was the grass. Casanova, who played six years in the NFL, loved the grass nearly 40 years before Les Miles became notorious for his affinity for the Death Valley greenery.
“The only part of Tiger Stadium I ever cared about was the field, and I’ve never played on a better field in my life,” he said. “It’s the type of field you just want to dive on the ground on.”
The Tiger Stadium expansions aren’t stopping any time soon.
The Tiger Athletic Foundation board recently approved a project to enclose the upper deck of the stadium’s south end- adding almost 7,000 seats. Athletic Director Joe Alleva said the project should be completed by 2014 or 2015.
Associate Athletic Director Eddie Nunez said LSU fell behind the national standard when it came to athletic facilities until Alleva and former Athletic Director Skip Bertman focused on stadium development.
In the past five years alone, LSU has added a new baseball stadium, a new softball stadium, a renovated soccer stadium and a basketball practice facility.
“We’ve had two athletic directors who really said the emphasis has to be placed on facilities,” Nunez said. “It’s a growing trend in college athletics.”
In Nunez’s nine years at LSU, the athletic department has undergone more than $200 million dollars in renovations and construction projects.
Nunez said until recent years, the University operated the field house, natatorium and PMAC, leaving room for improvement.
“About 2004 or 2005 we took over the ownership of those facilities,” he said. “In doing so, we’re playing catch-up – majorly.”
Nunez added the future would hold even more changes.
“There’s three facilities that are really left [to be upgraded], and the first two are tennis and gymnastics,” Nunez said. “At some point, our natatorium, too.”
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Contact Josh Naquin at [email protected]