Once upon a time, in an era that gave us Tub Thumping, Savage Garden, & of course, boy bands, the highwater mark for LSU football was either a trip to the pre-CFP era Peach Bowl in Atlanta or the godawful Independence Bowl in Shreveport.

“Back in those days,” a friend of mine who attended LSU in those ancient times told me, “the Independence Bowl was something that we looked forward to. I mean, that’s how bad LSU football was in the 1990’s.”

For some reason, that dark age of LSU football, which of course was the only decade in which the Tigers didn’t win an SEC regular season title in football (they did share the SEC West crown with Alabama in 1996 and shared it once again with Auburn in 1997) was when I became a fan of the LSU Tigers, largely because my elementary school’s nickname was the Tigers and of course, baseball. In fact, I remember my reaction when Warren Morris hit the game winning home run to beat Miami in the 1996 College World Series, jumping up and down in my grandmother’s room when the ball barely cleared the right field wall.

My first LSU football memory, on the other hand, was Kevin Faulk’s one-man show in 1997 against the Florida Gators, the villains of the SEC in those days, in Tiger Stadium. As a wide-eyed middle schooler, I sat with my grandmother in front of her TV and watched the good people of Baton Rouge try their best to tear down Tiger Stadium. From that point on, I was hooked on LSU football.

Weeks later, my grandmother, who was aware of my passion for radio, gave me a portable transistor radio from Radio Shack for Christmas. Because internet radio was still in its infancy, my only options for catching LSU football was either on TV via ESPN, WLMT Channel 30, ABC, & ESPN.

The other option was waiting until sundown to pick up WWL out of New Orleans, which was huge for me because LSU played a lot of games at night.

A few days after Christmas 1997, I pulled out that radio and picked up WWL’s broadcast of the 1997 Independence Bowl between Notre Dame & LSU. LSU, who had faced the Fighting Irish earlier in the year, losing 24-6 in South Bend, exacted revenge in Shreveport, winning 27-9 and finishing the season ranked 13th in the polls.

Months later, in a Memphis hospital room, during the NCAA Tournament, a time that my grandmother loved more than anything, I would learn that my grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Seven months later and five days after LSU, ranked in preseason polls at #7, would lose to Georgia at home, my grandmother would be dead at 64 and LSU, who started the 1998 season with three straight wins that included a road victory against Auburn, would fall to 4-7. The following season would be even worse, as LSU went 3-8, including a 41-7 destruction at the hands of Auburn (the infamous game in which those bastards smoked cigars on the Tiger Stadium turf) and said adios to Gerry DiNardo.

By the time I entered high school, I had done away with the old transistor radio my grandmother gave me. More importantly, LSU was turning the corner as a program, winning the SEC championship in Nick Saban’s second season as well as the Sugar Bowl over Illinois. More wins would follow as well as national championships in 2003 & 2007, as well as an SEC championship in 2011 and of course, this year.

As I write this two decades later, I always wondered why my grandmother, who was not a huge college football fan like my grandfather, gave me that radio for her last Christmas on this earth. Did she know she wasn’t for long or did she do it because she knew her grandson was an LSU fan?

I’d like to think the former.

Thank you, Mama Kay Kay.

Geaux Tigers.