BATON ROUGE — It was something the players had never seen before.
When LSU football equipment managers rolled mannequins into the team meeting room Monday morning, the team erupted.
On those mannequins draped gold jerseys with purple and white shoulder stripes and purple numbers, a new alternative uniform that the Tigers (6-4, 3-3 SEC) will debut against Vanderbilt and to 100,000-plus fans inside Tiger Stadium Saturday night (6:45 p.m., SEC Network).
“I think they’re clean,” LSU junior tight end Mason Taylor said. “They’re going to be a good look for sure. I’m excited for them.”
Senior defensive lineman Paris Shand said that when the team saw the jerseys, everyone leapt out of their seat.
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“I like it. The room erupted. We had never seen that before,” he said.
Saturday night isn’t the first time LSU, a football program that has one of the more universally recognizable uniforms as it’s one of the few teams that elects to wear white jerseys for home games, has worn gold jerseys.
The most recent time was in 2016 versus Mississippi State at home. Running back Leonard Fournette ran for two touchdowns and 147 yards that night in a 23-20 victory.
LSU has worn gold uniforms three other times, and perhaps not so coincidentally, it donned gold jerseys the first time against Vanderbilt in 1996 after the Commodores denied permission to LSU to wear its typical white jerseys for that home game – back then, home teams that wanted to wear the traditional road white jerseys had to get permission from the visiting team to do so.
Star junior left tackle Will Campbell likes the alternative unis that LSU has rolled out the last couple of seasons. LSU has white helmets in its arsenal to go along with purple tops that LSU has worn once this season. And he’s a fan of the new golds.
“They’re cool. I mean, at the end of the day it’s just a jersey,” Campbell said. “It’s going to get dirty just like the rest of them. It’s cool we are able to have different looks and I kinda like that. I don’t like wearing the same thing every week.”
The timing of LSU rolling out a new and different jersey could possibly be beneficial. The Tigers have lost three straight games to Texas A&M, Alabama and Florida last week. Talk around the footbal operations building has been the feeling is disappointment, mixed with some anger.
Like Shand and Taylor said, seeing the new jersey could serve as a bit of a morale booster within the locker room. The team hopes it carries over into the stands Saturday night.
“I think a little bit, yeah,” Taylor said. “It gets the team hyped up a little bit. But I think it’s one of those things that we want to show our fans a good time, showing them new jerseys and giving them a good experience. Winning the game will be a big thing for us.”
That last part is most important. So perhaps senior defensive lineman Gio Paez likely summed things up the best about the gold jerseys.
“The jerseys are cool,” Paez said. “But I just don’t give a f—, I just want to win.”
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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: What LSU football players said about new gold jerseys
