Die-hard LSU football fans can now swear their eternal allegiance to the team, taking their Tiger loyalty to the grave in an LSU-branded casket from a northern Louisiana funeral home.
Boone Funeral Home and Crematory in Bossier City offers the purple casket with gold hardware, which features the official LSU logo and tiger eye and is the only LSU casket on the market, said manager Ginger Hartman. A portion of the cost of each casket goes to the university, and the specific amount is worked out once the casket is purchased.
If cremation is more their flavor, customers can also have their ashes reside in an LSU urn, which also has a purple and gold color scheme and the official LSU logo.
The casket costs $4,395 — a bit pricier than the home’s average casket of $3,995. The LSU urn goes at the average price of $450.
Hartman said the idea for LSU-branded caskets, which went on the market in the past month, are about a year in the making — the “brain child” of Jim Ford and Justin Baxley of Foundation Partners Group, which helped bring the idea to customers through a third party manufacturer.
“To most customers,
every funeral home is the same,” Baxley said. “We’re just trying to break out and focus not so much on the death itself but on the life.”
NCAA caskets help celebrate the life of people who lived for sports, he said.
Memorial Licensing Company began the Collegiate Memorial line, which lists nearly 50 universities on their website, and lays claim as the nation’s largest provider of “college-themed memorial products.” The products are sold through individual funeral homes like Boone.
“In the past, families have used a variety of ways to show their loved ones’ zeal for their beloved LSU Tigers at the funeral service,” Hartman said in a statement. “Now, families are able to show their loved one’s devotion with an official LSU Tigers casket or cremation urn and know that a portion of the casket’s sale goes to the university.”
Tiger fans can even tailgate from the grave, with the funeral home organizing an event following the funeral service.
Hartman urged anyone, even students, to come to the Bossier City location to see the casket — even if they are not in the market for it.