LSU History Class: In the Beginning...

1893-1896

Back in the ATVS days, I started a project to tell the story of LSU football from its modest beginnings to present day. I never quite finished it, losing steam right when things got fun in the crazy years of the 1980s.

I wanted to finish the project up and get the present day, but I don’t write for the site anymore, and would be weird to pick it up at the end here. So, instead, I’m trying to start anew, and maybe clean up the old entries, especially the links. And hopefully put it on a new site that I control rather than anyone else.

However, my former editor, PodKatt, was in charge of finding photos. He did all of that work, and I don’t want to claim any of his work as my own. So the one major change is that I will not use any of his work. Sorry, this is going to be photo-free.

And away we go, again…

On a cold, blustery day in November of 1893, LSU played its first football game. They lost to Tulane 34-0.

For fifty cents, spectators could witness something that was similar to but definitely unlike modern football in scoring (five points for a touchdown, four for a field goal), the field (110 yards long), the players (only one player weighed over 200 pounds), and strategy (the flying wedge).

Honestly, it wasn’t really Tulane. Charles Coates, the school’s chemistry professor, wanted to expand the athletic offerings on LSU’s campus, and brought down the idea of a football team from his time at Johns Hopkins. He rounded up LSU’s team primarily from the student ROTC corps, but the Tulane team was largely composed of alumni and members of the Southern Athletic Club.

From the very first moment, LSU sports had issues with commerce and eligibility.

LSU had no uniforms, and players from both teams showed up in mismatched clothing of every type, so Coates sent his quarterback and future governor of Louisiana, Ruff Pleasant to the store to purchase ribbons. No one knew what LSU’s colors were, but the store stocked purple and gold ribbons for the upcoming Carnival season. By a happy accident, the green ribbons had not yet arrived. Col. David Boyd remarked years later that he chose blue and white as the school colors long before, but by that point, purple and gold had become the school standard.

The football team was far more of a recreational club than the competitive athletic team we have today. It is hard to pin down when the team went from frivolity to something more, but the first step was the hiring of a real coach, Albert Simmonds in 1894.

Coates was a professor trying to drum up some interest in the sport he loved. Simmonds was a taskmasker who actually drilled the team on proper tackling technique. He also ran his team so hard that his roster dropped to just 16 players.

In his debut, Simmonds guided LSU to its first win, over Natchez Athletic Club. However, just how far the team how to go when it played its first home game at State Field, a 26-6 loss to Ole Miss. Worse, LSU’s best player was Simmonds himself, who scored LSU’s only points, a 45-yard touchdown run.

In their second season under Simmonds, LSU kicked off the season with an 8-4 win over Tulane in front of nearly 1500 fans. Tulane lost its star and captain, Alfred Woods, early in the game. Of course, Tulane blamed the loss on the injury. A rivalry was beginning to form.

LSU would follow up the Tulane victory with wins at Centenary and then against Alabama, the program’s first big win over a school not in Louisiana. Fullback Sam Lambert scored two touchdowns to guide “the Baton Rouge eleven” to a 12-6 win over an Alabama team tired from a game the previous day against Tulane. LSU ended the season 3-0, and off the strength of this season, LSU would join its first football conference.

Conference Play Begins

The SIAA, after some false starts, began life on December 21, 1894, the brainchild of the southern football superpower at the time, Vanderbilt. After just one year, the SIAA expanded massively, from six to eighteen teams.

The biggest issue facing college football at the time was that of professionalism. The eastern powers shamelessly hired players. Walter Camp made openly violating the amateurism rules an essential part of his Yale dynasty, as he maintained a $100,000 slush fund to pay players. Football “tramps” would jump from school to school, looking for a better paycheck or more eligibility by changing their names.

The main goal of the SIAA was to promote “the development and purification of college athletics throughout the South." This of course meant taking a hard line on professional players.

And it wasn’t just lip service. Southern football wasn’t as developed, or as good, as their northern counterparts, so a pro athlete could run roughshod over the fledgling league. It was a matter of survival. With the basic rules of eligibility established as limited to actual students not getting paid, the game was given space to grow, even if the SIAA never got around to formalizing schedules or handing out official trophies.

More changes abounded. The flying wedge was banned and mass momentum plays were restricted in the name of player safety. Teams adopted the T formation and while no one was passing the ball with any frequency yet, teams were using the free kick as a way to advance the ball. Football was starting to look like modern football, but it held on to its rugby roots.

Even more significantly, LSU started to be referred by its mascot, the Tigers. Again, Charles Coates named the team, as it was customary for a college team to be named after an animal. But there was the additional meaning that the Louisiana Tigers was a Civil War regiment of some renown, and the Civil War still hung over the South like a cloud.

Finally, LSU replaced Simmonds with AW Jeardeau as the head coach. He would make an immediate impact. LSU won its first game in 1896 over Centenary, 46-0. And then came the controversy…

Down 2-0 in the second half to Tulane, LSU was driving in Tulane territory to perhaps the go-ahead score. A Tulane player injured his ankle, and they made a substitute. No big deal, except LSU captain Edwin Scott recognized the substitute and asked for the officials to stop the game.

The substitute, it turns out, was George Brooke. Brooke was a two-time All-American at Penn and a current enrollee of their law school (and a future inductee of the College Football Hall of Fame). If you’re going to cheat, go big. This wasn’t like trying to sneak a player in who was out of eligibility, this was like trying to sneak Red Grange in the game.

Tulane refused to remove Brooke, claiming he would attend Tulane next semester. Offered a chance to sign an affidavit to that effect, Brooke declined. The referee ruled in favor of LSU, and Tulane refused to continue to play, resulting in a forfeit. The game ended with an official 6-0 score.

LSU would not look back, winning its next four games by a combined 84-6. Ole Miss would be the only team to score an official point against LSU that season, in its 12-6 loss in Vicksburg, scoring a late touchdown to make the margin look better.

LSU would share the unofficial SIAA title with Georgia with its 6-0 (3-0) record.

In just three years, LSU football went from a one-game exhibition against whoever they could pull off the street to credibly play for the other team to the champions of the major southern football conference.

Program Overview 1893-1896

Athletic Director: None

National Titles: None

Conference Titles: Football (1896)

Programs Added: Football (1893), Baseball (1893)

Facilities Added: State Field

State Field at the turn of the last century was exactly what it sounds like, a field owned by the state. It was located at the old downtown campus and while the school eventually got around to building some bleachers, the crowds primarily stood around the sideline and were expected to not trample onto the field. The early days of LSU sports more closely resembled club sports of today than the big-time college programs they would become.

The title of Athletic Director did not exist yet, but let’s default to Charles Coates, who got the ball rolling for organized sports at LSU.

Yes, baseball got off the ground as well, in as just a haphazard way as football. Actually, baseball predates football by a few months, as LSU beat Tulane on May 13, 1893 by a score of 10-8.

LSU wouldn’t play games in either 1894 or 1896, and went 0-3-1 in 1895. But by joining the SIAA, there was some motivation to field a baseball team again, LSU went 3-3, with half of those games against Clinton Military Academy.

There was still a ways to go.