quote:
JacknolaSo is The Auburn mascot racist too? How about Mizzou? Clemson? Exc. by JacknolaWhile the term "Louisiana Tigers" was originally used only by Wheat's Battalion, it was eventually applied to all CSA troops from Louisiana. Hence, "Louisiana Tigers" is indeed a title with links to the WBTS and Louisiana troops.

Actually, the mascot name 'Tigers' had nothing whatsoever to do with the CSA Louisiana Tigers.

This is actually how the name came about:

Charles E. Coates, Jr., a Dean at LSU and the school's first football coach, noticed in the late 1890s that his school, unlike many others at the time, did not have a ferocious animal as its mascot, (as he related later in a letter written in 1937 during a retrospective interview relating what actually happened several years AFTER LSU chose their colors and played their first game in 1893.

He thought that LSU's colors of purple and gold (chosen in Feb. 1893) resembled the face of a tiger closely enough to use as the team's mascot, and ferocious enough to be en vogue with the times.
It had nothing to do with the Civil War or CSA or 'Louisiana Tigers.' People who 'associated' or later 'attributed' 'Tigers' to the civil war regiment were expressing an opinion, not fact. There is no written documentation at all that proclaims this as fact. It's total fabrication and opinion.

The 'Louisiana Tigers' was actually the name of SEVERAL La. military outfits in the early 1800s that fought in the Battle of New Orleans and the Spanish-American War, among others. The LSU mascot was """"""NOT"""""" NAMED AFTER the 'Louisiana Tigers' military unit that fought in Manassas,Va., or any other La. Military unit, as some people ERRONEOUSLY claim or propose. It was coincidence, and people who have written this inconclusive opinion are just fantasizing (quoted from Dan Hardesty - La. historian, author and journalist.)

MUCH MUCH later, it was the 1955 'fourth-quarter ball club' that coined the moniker 'Fighting Tigers.' The word 'fighting' was not added until NINETEEN FIFTY FIVE.
In addition, since the late 1890s, LSU has used the Tiger Emblem from the Washington Artillery - later the 141st Field Artillery - in existence since EIGHTEEN THIRTY EIGHT and that STLL EXISTS TO THIS DAY. Since 1838, the Washington Artillery has fought in numerous foreign wars defending America, including 1846 in the Mexican American war under General and future President of the United States Zachary Taylor. After earning the designation of 141st Field Arillery later, the unit mobilzed for World War II where it earned the Presidential Unit Citation, serving both in Europe and North Africa. Between 1959 and 1967 it was called the 141st Field Artllery Batallion, and in 2004 and 2005 and again in 2010 the 141st FA was mobilized to Baghdad, Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A detachment from this unit returned to New Orleans to assist in rescue efforts during and after Hurricane Katrina.....

This post was edited on 6/5/17 at 2:17 pm