LSU baseball fans rushed to stores after the Tigers won the College World Series on June 24 to buy whatever national championship merchandise they could.But the demand fell quickly.Sales of CWS merchandise from LSU gift centers were very high right after the championship but tailed off a week after the CWS Finals, said Mark Ewing, senior associate athletic director.”I know [Gift Center Coordinator Ashley Stringfellow] sold out her original allotment, which was probably about six or seven hundred shirts,” Ewing said. “It was still pretty good. We probably sold several thousand shirts.”Jared Loftus, owner of Tiger District, said the demand for baseball championship gear at his store has also already dropped, while demand for 2007 BCS National Championship gear lasted several months.He said he sold about 10 times as much gear for football in 2007 than the CWS in 2009.”It’s not really comparable,” Loftus said. “It’s a fraction of what football national championship sales were.”Loftus said LSU winning the CWS makes the demand for baseball gear in general much higher than normal at his store.”We see a pretty substantial bump in sales,” Loftus said. “If you look at June of last year over June of this year, I’d say it helped to double sales for that month.”Ewing also said demand for baseball championship gear didn’t last as long as it did for the BCS national championship.”For football, those shirts we were able to sell for months, in fact really your whole year,” Ewing said. “We were still selling national championship T-shirts a year or two later.”Joel Friedman, vice president of general merchandising for Barnes and Noble College Booksellers, said the demand for football national championship gear at the LSU Bookstore didn’t last quite as long as at it did at Tiger District.”You’ve got to remember that when the football championship happens, these kids are on winter break,” he said.Friedman said there is usually a 72-hour period where sales for any kind of championship gear are at their highest.”The demand is usually very high the night of and the day after the championship,” he said.College World Series championship memorabilia was sold at Alex Box Stadium during the Tigers’ title celebration June 25 — the day after the Tigers won the CWS. But the celebration for LSU’s 2007 BCS championship was on Jan. 19, almost two weeks after the title game on Jan. 7.Ewing said the quick turnaround for the baseball celebration eliminated time for people to buy championship gear. He said LSU was still selling shirts right before the football celebration.”With baseball, what happens is a lot of your players go to leagues, so you’ve got to have your celebration right away,” Ewing said. “You go, you have your celebration, and that’s where a lot of people buy. And from that time on, there’s really no need for them to be on campus.”Friedman said a large portion of the Bookstore’s orders for College World Series championship gear has come via Internet request. He also said there was about 25 percent more demand for CWS gear this year than the last time the Tigers won in 2000.Friedman said the smaller national popularity of college baseball makes the championship gear far less popular, with numbers behind football and basketball.Ewing said the demand for championship merchandise for LSU’s 2008-2009 Southeastern Conference men’s basketball title wasn’t as high as the football and baseball national championships.The only conference championship Ewing said drew a lot of buzz in terms of marketing sales was LSU’s SEC football championship in 2001.”It was the first time we had been to the SEC championship game, and it was a lot of excitement,” Ewing said. “Now you’ve got a few conference championships under your belt, so people know what they want to buy. And if you win a conference championship, you’re usually in a good dang bowl.”—-Contact Robert Stewart at [email protected]