A Hurricane Party on the Bayou

LSU won the game, 53-20, and nobody left early. The PA announcer kept calling out which roads were being closed and urged people to leave the game early or they may not be able to get home. Nobody left. What’s wrong with us?

Before every game, the Tiger Stadium PA announcer, Dan Borne', reads a weather report. The report usually includes the temperature, cloud condition, wind direction, and velocity, etc. At the end of the report, he always says, “Chance of rain...NEVER!”

There is an old folklore about how it never rains in Tiger Stadium. Well, let me let you in on a little secret: It does rain in Tiger Stadium sometimes. I’m not supposed to tell outsiders, so please don’t rat me out!

And make no mistake, if Gustav keeps on the current track that Jim Cantore just illustrated while I was typing this sentence, then it's going to rain in Tiger Stadium on Tuesday. It’s going to rain a lot.

But here’s the funny part: I forgot to tell you about why the game was really moved up six hours. LSU officials didn’t want to feel the wrath of the fans who were already annoyed that the game was moved from 7 p.m. to 4 p.m. (for TV) by canceling it. The governor really wanted to start “contra flow” Saturday evening, so something had to give.

For those of you who don’t know, “contra flow” means that all lanes of the major interstates and highways flow in the same direction to aid evacuation of the New Orleans metropolitan area. If the game went ahead as scheduled, you would have thousands of evacuees trying to get out of the city while, at the same time, thousands of LSU fans were trying to get back in.

So this is seriously what happened: They moved the game to 10 a.m. and announced that contra flow would begin as soon as the State Police "felt that the traffic from the LSU game had completely subsided." 

So you see, if you live in south Louisiana and a deadly hurricane is bearing down on you, you shouldn’t expect to be able to escape to safety until the Tigers have left the field and the fans have left the highways.

I know, we’re crazy. But a fan can’t really be a true fan without being at least a tiny bit  dysfunctional. But the next time the debate comes up about who has the most die-hard fans, I just ask that you remember this story.

On a serious note, I greatly appreciate all the notes of concern I have been getting over the last few days from my B/R buds. I promise to stay in touch and let you guys know that the wife and I are OK. Who knows, you guys might be my main contact with the outside world for a while.

I guess it’s time to begin another “Hurrication!” By the way, today is the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Life is funny that way.

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