The 1949 LSU football team had a tough schedule to play.The Tigers were slated to face several conference champions of recent years, including 1946 Southwest Conference champion Rice, 1946 Southern Conference winner North Carolina and Tulane — the eventual 1949 champion of the Southeastern Conference and one of LSU’s biggest rivals of the era.While LSU vs. Tulane no longer has the prestige surrounding the matchup that it did then, 1949 senior running back Al Heroman said defeating Tulane was a huge accomplishment that propelled LSU to the Sugar Bowl that season. The team will be honored Saturday in celebration of its 60-year anniversary.”If you beat Tulane, you made the season,” Heroman said. “Tulane was tough. That was a major team to beat.”Tulane had shut out LSU, 46-0, in the game between the teams in 1948 in Baton Rouge.But in 1949, a different destiny laid ahead for the Tigers.Jim Lyle was a junior defensive end for the 1949 LSU squad, and his brother, the late Melvin “Sam” Lyle, was an offensive end for the 1949 LSU squad, which got revenge in New Orleans against the Green Wave, 21-0, in the final regular season game. The team subsequently earned a bid to the Sugar Bowl, an invitation Lyle said was a big reward for the whole team.”We were very excited — a lot because it was right after [World War II],” Lyle said.Lyle said many players’ families could not attend the game, which meant more money was available for the players in the aftermath of the war.”We knew a lot of our families weren’t going to come to the game because they lived too far away,” Lyle said. “So we were going to get that money to put in our pockets. We were excited about that.”The outcome of the 1950 Sugar Bowl was not so sweet for the Tigers, as they were shut out by Oklahoma, 35-0, to finish the year at 8-3.”When we beat [Oklahoma] in the national championship [in 2004], that was my revenge,” Lyle said.Lyle said the team had special players to keep it together despite losing the opening game to Kentucky, 19-0.”We were a pretty good football team, but not outstanding,” Lyle said. “We had some good games and … a lot of good guys and veterans on the team just getting back from the service.” Lyle said he was on the football team with about five people from his hometown of El Dorado, Ark. The players referred to Lyle by his high-school nickname “Egg,” which his brother gave him one breakfast when he would not share seven eggs with Melvin.”I told him, ‘I didn’t fix your breakfast,'” Jim Lyle said. “He went to school and told all the guys my name was Egg. Now if somebody calls here and wants to talk to Egg, I know it’s somebody from our football team.”Lyle said though the 1949 team achieved great success, the LSU football program did not have nearly the recognition it does 60 years later.”The athletes today are so much bigger, stronger and faster than the athletes when we were playing ball,” Lyle said. “With the weight rooms they work out in, they take a totally different attitude toward training. When we were in school, if the coaches caught you lifting weights or in the swimming pool, you could be dismissed from the team.”While LSU did not go undefeated in 1949, Lyle said accumulating key victories such as Tulane got the team the attention for a bowl game.”We weren’t really Sugar Bowl material,” Lyle said. “But having won those games, the newspaper picked up on it and kind of railroaded us in. We really had a Cinderella team.”—–Contact Rachel Whittaker at [email protected]