SI Article: Police During LSU Gameday

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Moments later, from a room deep within Tiger Stadium, Walters places the opened binder on a lectern, looks out to more than 300 uniform-wearing men and women seated before him and kicks off the day for the most essential people at any major college football game day: law enforcement officers.

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“It’s a giant game of triage,” Maxwell says. “We have all the problems of a major city in a three-mile block. Tiger Stadium is the fifth-largest city in Louisiana when full and then there are 30,000 more on campus.”

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Visiting teams normally travel with a law enforcement contingent from their own state, but Louisiana also provides two officers for the head coach.

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“We once had a bottle hurled so hard that it shattered a bus window,” Cain recalls. “That was against Tennessee one year.”

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The intensive sweeps of the stadium can produce decades-old artifacts within this concrete and steel structure. “We found an engine block once,” says Blair Nicholson, a captain at the sheriff’s office in charge of game day assignments. “Over in the northeast side of the stadium we found 30-gallon cans of water from the Cold War era.”

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One officer on this Saturday is asked if problems ever arise in transporting referees out of the stadium after games. No, he says: “We only have a problem with the refs on the field.”

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