re: LSU and The Purple Jersey Story

At least the Purple jerseys are somewhat acceptable now. They were almost completely abandoned there for a few years because of the association with the Archer and Hallman years. Hence the appearance of the Gold jerseys twice under DiNardo.

I was at LSU when DiNardo showed up (which people weren't really happy with, at first). However, he was smart. He made a big and very public effort to get the white jerseys back for home games, and that won him a lot of support before he ever coached a game. He also did a good job with his Bring Back the Magic tour. I remember he even came to a pre-season band rehearsal and gave us a rah-rah speech about how important we were to the program. He did a solid PR job, and the white jerseys were a BIG part of that.

I remember that Saban actually faced some resistance from fans when he first started using Purple again at home against non-con opponents. Remember the speech about appealing to 17-18 year old recruits? Now, they are at least accepted as not being "cursed" by most of the fan base. But the White jerseys will always be associated with all of our championship seasons.