Huey Long built LSU to win football games. What he created was one of the most decorated athletic programs in the history of American college sports.
Football gets the headlines — five national championships in 1958, 2003, 2007, 2011, and 2019, with Tiger Stadium regularly ranked the most intimidating venue in the sport. But the full picture is larger. LSU baseball has won six national championships and is considered one of the elite programs in the country; the Alex Box Stadium atmosphere on a postseason night rivals anything Death Valley produces. The gymnastics program has won six national championships and routinely sells out the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for meets. Track and field has produced more Olympic medalists than most countries. Swimming and diving, tennis, beach volleyball — the pattern holds across sports.
The athletics department operates like a small professional franchise inside a public university. The revenues fund an academic institution; the championships define a city's identity. On any weekend when LSU has a home event — any sport, any season — Baton Rouge reorganizes itself around it.
The Pete Maravich Assembly Center is named for the greatest college basketball player who ever lived. Pistol Pete averaged 44.2 points per game over his LSU career from 1967 to 1970, a record that has never been approached. He grew up in Baton Rouge. His father Press Maravich was the head coach. The building that bears his name now hosts gymnastics meets where 13,000 people watch floor routines with the intensity of a football crowd. That is LSU athletics in one image.