Into the Tiger trap.

Byline: Bob Rodman The Register-Guard

Buckle up, Beavers. It's not just a game in Baton Rouge, La., with which you've decided to start your football season.

It's an ordeal.

They don't call Louisiana State's stadium Death Valley because it's a great place to picnic.

This thing is a three-day Bayou Bash that begins on Thursday and finally slows down on Sunday. It is not for the faint of heart, an LSU opponent or anyone affiliated with an LSU opponent.

Oregon State is about to learn all about it, for the fourth time in its football history, when the Beavers arrive in Baton Rouge on Thursday for two days of acclimation before taking on the Bowl Championship Series defending champion and third-ranked Tigers in a nationally televised game on ESPN, beginning at 3 p.m. PDT.

"It's electric," said Mike Riley, the Oregon State coach who, as a player for Alabama, was a cornerback from 1971-74 under the late and legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Perhaps as in electroshock.

The game, while hardly secondary, is sandwiched between a zillion pregame and postgame activities.

The tailgating begins Thursday night, 48 hours before the kickoff. Game day in Tigertown is a three-day show.

Fans, often up to 120,000 of them, crowd their way onto the sprawling LSU campus. They are draped in purple and gold apparel from head to foot, faces painted and mouths full of buzzing beverages and food from jambalaya to fried alligator.

Hours before a game, hordes of LSU fans line the street as buses carrying the visiting team arrive to be greeted by a welcome wagon that more resembles a loaded tank with its turret pointed in a not-so-soothing direction.

Descending, continuously, on the trespassers are a flurry of verbal taunts, beginning with the suggestion that opponents are little more than "Tiger bait."

"I've been here as a player in the early '60s," said Bill Curry, now an ESPN analyst. "I've been here as a coach in the '80s.

"... There is no place like Tiger Stadium in all of college football. I might add there is no place like it in the NFL."

Tiger Stadium, considered one of the loudest athletic venues in the world, has a seating capacity of 91,600. Four times last season, the attendance cleared the 92,000 barrier.

Louisiana State's average home attendance of more than 90,000 makes Tiger Stadium the state's fifth-largest city on a Saturday night.

"Baton Rouge happens to be the worst place in the world for a visiting team," Bryant once said. "It's like being inside a drum."

Brad Budde, a former Southern California All-American, said Tiger Stadium was "unbelievable, crazy. That place makes Notre Dame look like Romper Room."

Then there is the darn tiger. Good, old, growling Mike V, the latest in a long line of Bengal tiger mascots whose work began in 1936 with the original Mike.

Among the tiger's duties is having himself and his cage parked next to the opponent's locker room at the southeast end of the stadium. Opposing players must make their way past Mike's cage to reach their locker room.

"I do remember the tiger in that cage," Riley said.

Riley's Crimson Tide teams never lost to Louisiana State, at Baton Rouge or on 'Bama turf. Oregon State never has won in its three previous games against the Tigers, all at Baton Rouge.

"But the whole atmosphere at Louisiana State is college football tradition at its finest," Riley said. And at its most intimidating.

Riley remembered well the clash between Bryant's pregame tradition of Alabama's players walking around the field before a game, then heading to the Tide locker room.

The game against LSU, if won, would propel the Crimson Tide into the 1971 season's Orange Bowl, Riley recalled.

"It was 2 1/2 hours before kickoff when we got to Tiger Stadium," Riley said, "but the LSU student section already was full. By the time we were walking in front of that section, the students were yelling and screaming at us, and throwing oranges at us. They were like missiles coming at us.

"Everybody started running, even coach Bryant, to get out of there. But it's exhilarating. We won," he said. "I think we fed off the atmosphere."

Somewhere amid all the hoopla, the tailgating and the crushing exuberance, there's a game played. And it's usually won by LSU.

In the 80 years since Tiger Stadium became Louisiana State's football home, LSU has won 70 percent of the 490 games played on its turf, a record of 335-137-18.

The Tigers have played 84 season-opening games at Death Valley. They have won 67 of them. Visiting teams try to survive as much as they try to win.

Sport Magazine, in 1998, determined Tiger Stadium to be "the most feared road playing site in America."

No need now to wonder why.

TIGER TALES

Some things you probably did not know about LSU:

Louisiana State was the first college football team to play on foreign soil when the Tigers played at Cuba's University of Havana in 1907. LSU won 56-0.

In the 110 seasons of LSU football, only one player's number has been retired - Heisman Trophy winner (in 1959) Billy Cannon's No. 20.

The Tigers have made 35 bowl appearances. By comparison, Oregon State has appeared in 10.

The Tiger Athletic Foundation is funding a $3 million, 15,000-square foot habitat for Mike V, the Bengal tiger mascot for LSU.

LSU is one of the few college football teams that wears white jerseys for its home games, a tradition that began in 1958 when the Tigers finished the season by winning the national championship.

Tiger Stadium once housed 1,500 dormitory rooms on the east and west ends of the facility.

CAPTION(S):

The LSU mascot leads players and cheerleaders onto the field before a Tigers home game. There's also a genuine tiger on hand, strategically placed in his cage near the visiting locker room. Louisiana State's home field is known as Death Valley, and the Tigers' record in the stadium supports that nickname. LSU is 335-137-18 in the 80 years since it made Tiger Stadium its home field, and the Tigers have won 67 of their 84 season openers played there. Louisiana State University LSU fans turn the traditional game-day experience into a long weekend of food, fun and football.