Even an avid sports fan might miss one of the most important aspects of a team — the equipment manager.
LSU’s success on the field has provided its athletic equipment managers with a wealth of opportunities.
“We’ve had about a dozen guys go on and become head equipment managers from the [former equipment manager] Jeff Boss era until about now,” said LSU Associate Equipment Manager George Branigan.
Branigan has worked for 11 years as an equipment manager and has been around the LSU program since attending the University as an undergraduate. The New Orleans native spent five seasons as a student manager for baseball and one season working with football.
“Being an equipment manager at LSU allowed me to meet the people that I work with today and opened up the doors,” Branigan said. “They say it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and to get started in this business, that’s how it is.”
He said being an equipment manager also broadens your range of knowledge in other areas of athletics.
“There’s opportunities because of the environment we work in,” Branigan said. “And because of the elements we’re exposed to, being the business side, the purchasing side, the athletic equipment side, that really opens a lot of doors out of just equipment managing.”
Branigan took over for Jeff Springer, who left LSU to become the head equipment manager at Louisiana Tech. Springer is now the head equipment manager at Alabama.
“I had a lot of opportunities being a student manager at LSU that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else,” Springer said. “I got to see parts of the country that I would have never been to if it hadn’t been for working there.”
A student at LSU from 1996 to 2001, Springer attributes much of LSU’s success with sports managers to Boss, who passed away from a brain tumor in 2003 after holding the position for 23 years.
“The work ethic that [Boss] instilled in all of us and taking pride in what we do has helped everybody in whatever field they went into,” Springer said.
Recent LSU graduate and former student baseball manager Josh Pope has learned first-hand what experience at LSU can do for an equipment manager’s future.
“Our No. 1 job is to make the coach’s job easier,” Pope said. “[LSU baseball coach] Paul Mainieri is great person to work under, and so is [hitting coach] Javi Sanchez.”
During his time with the baseball team, Pope was responsible for tasks such as setting up the field for practice, laundry, and ordering jerseys, bats and other equipment through companies like Nike and Easton.
“Students get to campus in August,” Pope said. “But we start a week and half before anyone gets there, setting up the locker room with the players’ cleats and everything.”
Pope said becoming close friends with the other managers made the job a lot easier.
“We all knew what each other’s jobs were,” Pope said. “It’s all about the friendships you make being an equipment manager. We all work together and we still all hang out.”
The Grapevine, Texas, native spent the 2011 football season as an intern with the Jacksonville Jaguars. As an intern, Pope was one of eight students from across the United States that worked 90 hours per week during training camp doing laundry, setting up practice, cleaning the locker rooms and handling and transporting equipment to preseason game sites.
After making it through tryouts in the Jaguar’s training camp, Pope was one of two managers invited to work with the team for the season. The 24-year-old got the opportunity to work with leading rusher Maurice Jones-Drew during the season while tending to helmets and other equipment for the team’s running backs.
Pope recently received an offer from the New York Mets to become the club’s assistant equipment manager. The former LSU student will begin working with the Mets on Feb. 15 as the team heads to Port St. Lucie, Fla., for spring training.
 
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Contact Ian Fontenot at [email protected]