Saturday will not be your regular non-conference game in Tiger Stadium. It will be the first time in LSU football program history the Tigers have hosted a U.S. Service Academy School.
This will be the second time the Tigers and Black Knights have faced each other on the football field. The first meeting occurred in 1931 and Army blanked LSU 20-0 in West Point.
Because of his time during Notre Dame, LSU coach Brian Kelly, who is one win away from reaching 300 career victories, has a lot of experience facing service academy schools and he owns a 15-1 record against them.
Kelly says the players at Army, Navy and Air Force are college athletics at its purest form.
“These are elite student athletes that are going to graduate, and the first thought isn’t the NFL, the first thought is protecting our country,” said Kelly. “It just lends itself to a great perspective when we are in this age of NIL, transfer portal, and playing time, it just gives us a great perspective how it can be done so well on the other end.”
While this is not an SEC game, Kelly believes this will be a great game for the fans and the players.
“The pageantry of it, the cadets being at the game, singing the alma mater with Army, Navy or Air Force whoever the academy is memories that our players will have for the rest of their lives,” said Kelly.
LSU goes into the game as 31-point favorites. After starting the season with a 2-1 record, the Black Knights have lost three in a row and were shutout last week 19-0 against Troy.
LSU offensive tackle Will Campbell was asked earlier this week if you dial it back a little bit, because you are facing young men who plan to protect our country. The answer is no.
“Obviously everybody appreciates what they do for our country, but Saturday night the lights are going to come on and there’s going to be a football game, so we got to prepare, just like it is anybody else and go out there and take it to them, just like we would anybody else, we do respect everything they do off the field, but this is a football game on Saturday,” said Campbell.
In a sign of respect and a way to honor the Army Black Knights. The LSU logos in the endzones in Tiger Stadium have been painted in camouflage.
Connections between LSU and Army
Tigers’ walk-on linebacker Shelby Lee served in the Army for nearly four years before joining LSU in the offseason. The DeSoto, Texas native enlisted in the Army in 2020 and was a member of the 11B Infantry.
The late Paul Dietzel coached LSU to a national championship in 1958. But following the 1961 season, Dietzel took over as the head coach at Army, a position he held from 1962 to 1965.
During World War II, LSU was one of the top four schools producing officers for the U.S. Armed Forces. LSU had more than 5,000 former students serving as officers, including 16 who achieved the rank of Brigadier General or higher. In all, 12,000 individuals from LSU served and over 500 died, during World War II.
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And Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, who got his law degree from LSU, is a graduate of Army as he earned his degree from the United States Military Academy in West Point in 1988. Edwards says many members of his graduating class will be at Saturday’s game.