PALMER: Twenty years later, the memories remain

By Hunt Palmer

So few days truly live with you the rest of your life.

The sights and sounds from January 4, 2004, still linger for me.

Dr. Day, the pastor at First United Methodist Church where I grew up in Shreveport, mentioned the big game to be played that night during his message. As a high school sophomore, I appreciated that probably a little bit more than whatever scripture followed.

My dad and I changed clothes and headed south. Hours later, sometime around 2:00, we arrived in New Orleans. It was unseasonably warm. I wore my lucky gold shirt and purple basketball shorts. As we rode through Metairie then by City Park, ultimately the Superdome appeared, nestled under a skyline that didn’t remotely resemble Shreveport-Bossier.

My heart rate rose.

LSU was hours away from playing Oklahoma for a national championship. This was all new to me, just a couple of weeks shy of my 16^th birthday. And it was all new to my father, just a couple of years shy of his 50^th.

Postseasons of my childhood were highlighted by a pair of Independence Bowl wins and a famous home run in Omaha. Then there was a Sugar Bowl two years earlier. I watched on television as Rohan Davey, Josh Reed and Dominic Davis carved up Illinois.

So much of my dad’s time as a Tiger was dominated by Bear Bryant. And a pair of great basketball teams fell short of the final game.

We arrived Uptown at my aunt and uncle’s house. I was beaming.

After a couple of hugs, it was time to head downtown for a couple of big tailgate parties. I snagged a pair of purple and gold Nokia beads with the LSU logo prominently displayed.

My only previous ventures into the French Quarter were a Saturday morning Café’ du Monde trip with my cousins and some post-wedding family brunch at Galatoire’s as a kid. Tailgating for me was throwing a football and dodging cars in the lot across from The Box. I’d never been to the French Quarter for this.

As I watched folks sucking down hand grenades and hurricanes while kids were playing buckets as drums, my senses were overloaded. And as I guzzled a Coke and grabbed a plate of jambalaya, I heard something that was all too familiar—The Golden Band from Tigerland.

As those famous four notes blanketed the tailgate party and the “LSU, LSU, LSU” chants followed, it finally felt like a football game instead of a festival.

It was time to see if the Tigers could really hang with Heisman winner Jason White and all-American defenders Derrick Strait and Teddy Lehman.

I knew Oklahoma’s roster by heart. I’d played Tigers-Sooners approximately 56 times throughout the month of December on NCAA Football 2004.

As we entered the dome, the buzz was unlike any I could remember. Nokia commercials frequented the square video boards in the four corners of the stadium. Jerry Roemig’s voice permeated the air and has been forever etched into my ear drums.

My nerves were cooked by the time the starting lineups were announced, and the ball was kicked off.

It only took one snap to cure that.

As Justin Vincent bolted into the clear, a deafening roar emerged from the purple and gold side of the Superdome. I leapt up and down for all 64 yards to the point that my beads shattered around my neck, scattering into the aisle.

That play, though it was erased moments later by a mishandled snap, alleviated my fears that LSU couldn’t play with a perennial power like Oklahoma.

Those fears were unfounded. LSU dictated the terms of the game much of the New Orleans night. Corey Webster interception. Skyler Green jet sweep score. Vincent putting the Tigers back up. Marcus Spears pick six.

Each big moment triggering high fives with strangers, who turned into my best friends for four special hours, and my dad, by my side for every play.

The last snap was a fourth down. Dad and I debated heavily how the Tigers should handle it with just nine ticks left. He asked the man behind us who was clearly not working on his first beer of the ballgame, ”what do we do?”

“We going to the Quarter!” the man exclaimed.

Not exactly the feedback we were looking for in the moment, but admirably honest. Ultimately, we and Nick Saban decided to punt it. Saban’s input probably carried a little more weight.

As the ball left Donnie Jones’s foot, the countdown from over half of the stadium started. And it reached zero.

While I believed after JV broke free than LSU could do it. Postgame I still had a hard time grasping that they did.

After a big hug from my dad, I ran down 15 rows to do the same with my aunt and uncle who were coincidentally seated in the same section.

As I ascended the stairs back to my seat, I saw my dad staring toward the terrace level in tears. I turned the same direction and saw the square video board lit up with the LSU logo of the time, the cartoon tiger and geaux font, with text reading “LSU 2003 BCS National Champions”.

That was a little more than my dad could handle.

My dad and I won’t ever have a moment quite like that one unless LSU’s men’s basketball team can snag a title.

Since that night, LSU has made a habit out of playing for football national titles in the Superdome. What once felt like an impossibility became the norm.

Saturday, I’ll hear Oklahoma’s band in person for the first time in 20 years.

Jerry Roemig won’t be calling Kejuan Jones’s name. No one will be playing snake on a Nokia cell phone. And I won’t have on basketball shorts.

But I’m hopeful that I’ll make more memories watching LSU and Oklahoma play. For some, the decades of distain for Auburn and Florida can’t simply be replicated overnight with the Sooners and Longhorns. I’m not so sure of that. Things escalated pretty quickly with Texas A&M.

Perhaps the SEC will make this the same type of annual game LSU played with Arkansas and Texas A&M over the years.

It’s impossible to say what the future will hold the Tigers and Sooners. I do remember the past though.

Always will.