LSU student government fires back at Gov. Jeff Landry with resolution regarding live tigers at football games

Another chapter was authored in the tale of the stand-in tiger that was brought to the LSU–Alabama game over the weekend, with the LSU student government passing a resolution to halt the use of live tigers at home football games, according to a report.

The practice had been halted for years prior to this past weekend, and the live tiger — Mike — that is kept on campus in an enclosure across from the stadium was not used. In years past, Mike the Tiger would be wheeled around the stadium pregame.

And though the practice stopped, it was brought back recently at the behest and insistence of Louisiana’s Governor, Jeff Landry, an alumni of then-Louisiana-Lafayette (now just Louisiana) and Loyola Law in New Orleans.

Despite pushback on his move to get the tiger involved, Landry was resolute in his decision to make it happen and decried his critics.

“Our tiger, our live tiger, unfortunately, disappointingly, was the only tiger who showed up Saturday. I’m sorry,” Jeff Landry said, according to The Advocate, saying it was “woke people” who were upset about the tiger being flown in and used as a prop.

He added more to defend his push for the live tiger to be at the game.

“I had more people come up to me, and they remembered Mike the Tiger more than some of the great plays in Tiger Stadium,” Landry said, according to the newspaper. “And they grew up as children seeing this. It’s about tradition. At the end of the day, these woke people have tried to take tradition out of this country. It’s tradition that built this country.”

One of Landry’s more vocal critics in the aftermath of the LSU scab tiger debacle was ESPN host and analyst Rece Davis.

“Occasionally you bring in some bad karma, you bring in some things that serve as distractions to somebody or just unnecessarily add to the circus,” Davis said of Landry. “This is where we get to dumb loses more than smart wins in Baton Rouge this weekend.

“Louisiana has a long history of politicians moving any which way they can – by hook or by crook – and getting exactly what they want. And what they wanted was a tiger on the field. So somehow, despite the fact that Brian Kelly wanted no part of this… there still wound up with a tiger on the field prior to the Alabama game.”