THIS is what these LSU students with their mascot name petition need to read:

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 said in a letter written in 1937. He thought that LSU's colors of purple and gold resembled the face of a tiger closely enough to use as the team's 'ferocious' mascot - en vogue at the time.

It had nothing to do with the Civil War. People who 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 opinion.

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 2010m 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.....