Beaver believers get an earful OSU fans enjoy southern hospitality — and good-natured taunts of ‘Tiger bait!' By Cliff Kirkpatrick Staff Writer BATON ROUGE, La. — It's 8 a.m. Saturday morning, and three Oregon State alums are gathered around the ESPN "College Gameday" stage on the LSU campus. As they walk up to the growing crowd of about 500 people, they are serenaded with the chants of "Tiger bait!" After the show, they were offered beer and barbecue. Since the Beavers don't come by these parts often, southern hospitality was in order. "This is an awesome experience, especially when we heard people chant ‘Tiger bait,' " said Bryan Norris, a 1995 OSU grad living in Phoenix. "That's what college football is all about. "The thing that's cool is at 8 a.m., there are this many people out here, and the game is nine hours away. It's nice to see big-time fans who are that way all the time." Thousands of LSU fans and a few hundred Beaver believers camped overnight around Tiger Stadium. They were brought out of their slumber as ESPN staged its live pregame show at the Parade Grounds, a mile east of the stadium. There were several OSU fans in the crowd of approximately 2,000 on a wet, humid morning. Various signs and shirts adorned with beavers were about, some for OSU and many more showing them being eaten by tigers. As the cameras went live, the LSU chants drowned out the OSU ones, but the Beaver backers were noticeable. "Just the game is going to be fun," Norris said. "It was too good to pass up once you couple it with a trip to New Orleans." Brendan McMullen, Charlie Broadfoot and Norris are part of a group that calls itself Tailgate State. They are spread across the nation but come back to Corvallis every home game and meet at the same place on Washington Way. A few road games make it onto their calendar, with LSU being a must. McMullen, who lives in Portland, celebrated his 36th birthday at the game. "It has been a good time, and you have to experience the abuse," said McMullen, who attended OSU in 1988. "It's good-natures." LSU fans told stories about throwing whiskey bottles at other Southeastern Conference fans and trapping them in tipped-over port-o-potties. They were more civil to OSU fans, however. They believe the Beavers are big underdogs, and since they have come such a long way, they don't need to be mean. Mike Hayes, an LSU alum from Cincinnati welcomed the Tailgate State trio. He asked if they needed any help or wanted to know anything about the area. "Everyone is so nice, and we've already been invited to two LSU parties," said Kerry Garber, who's married to an OSU alum. "I think the common bond is our shared hatred of USC." Her husband, Bill, grew up in Corvallis and graduated from OSU in 1996. He's now a lobbyist in Washington D.C. The trip this far east made the game mandatory for him. He and his wife took a week to drive here. They toured various SEC and Atlantic Conference campuses along the way. "We have a large group of OSU friends back home, and we try to go to the destination road games," Bill Garber said. "A game like this, we couldn't miss the opportunity to see the Beavers play."
