Dear Les,
I’ve been a professor at LSU since 1982. Yesterday, I got a job offer from a university up North. LSU finances being what they are, I had to entertain the idea.
Someone told me a jet with their school colors landed in Baton Rouge during the weekend, but it didn’t get much media coverage.
None, to be honest. They don’t send jets after professors.
That’s cool with me, because your job is more difficult. Frankly, I couldn’t take it. Tiger Stadium looms directly over my office, and I can tell you a few things about football and academics.
First, games have always been painful and fans in the stadium have always booed, but the true LSU fan doesn’t go to games. Take it from me: Games are for lightweights.
The true fan can’t bear it. After tailgating, we go home and clean house. I’d live in a pigsty if it weren’t for LSU football. Every now and then we backslide and turn on the radio, but try not to listen. Unless LSU has just scored.
Then we turn on the TV, but only to watch the replay. If we’re up by three touchdowns in the final two minutes, we watch. Risky, of course.
LSU’s financial problems are like that. In 1983 they were going decimate the University because of the oil bust. This was my first job, and I was scared to death. It happens every few years for the simple reason that LSU does not control its tuition.
It’s painful and some of the top professors leave every time, loyalty not being a strong suit for professors or coaches. When the first reports arrive, most of us stop paying attention and just keep working — have you ever seen a faculty parking lot on a Saturday when there’s no game? Always full.
Athletics and academics aren’t far apart. Your players take our courses and we watch your games — or clean house. It was great to see that you’ve got both class and loyalty. Don’t worry about the lightweights.
I do have a problem with your national championship. There was no reasonable warning that LSU would be playing with two losses.
I was in Scotland at a meeting funded by Europeans who neither broadcast nor webstream American football. I “watched” the game after midnight in a sub-zero luggage closet, shivering for three hours and waiting for text updates every few minutes. I enjoyed it immensely but caught pneumonia.
Maybe for the next championship, you could arrange a heads up?
For my part, I hereby announce my intention to remain at LSU.
The house will need cleaning come August.
Wesley Shrum
Chair and Professor of Sociology
Louisiana State University
Letter to the Editor: Going to LSU football games is for lightweights
February 3, 2011