Lane Kiffin’s line that LSU is “just different” didn’t come out of nowhere, and one of the people best equipped to explain why is James Manasseh.
Manasseh has spent his professional life in courtrooms as a Baton Rouge criminal defense attorney and now a 19th District Court Judge, but for nearly as long, he’s also lived in the Tiger Stadium pressbox. The son of longtime LSU sports information director Paul Manasseh, he started going to LSU games in 1969 at age 7 and has been around the program long enough to see the moments that shaped how the country sees the Tigers.
He has worked in the pressbox since 1977, back when he was at University High. Since 1983, he has been the voice of the LSU pressbox, feeding media members the details, facts and notes play by play while the crowd noise swallows everything else.
On Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday night, Manasseh pointed to the exact stretch when LSU started to feel different on a national stage: Dec. 5, 1970, when No. 8 LSU beat No.
16 Ole Miss and Archie Manning 61-17 in Tiger Stadium on ABC in prime time. It was LSU’s first nationally televised game in Tiger Stadium at night, and Manasseh said it changed how the program and the venue were viewed.
The next year brought another one. Tiger Stadium hosted its second nationally televised prime-time game on ABC, and No.
14 LSU rolled past No. 7 Notre Dame 28-8.
“Those were the two games that I think made the nation sort of look at LSU and Tiger Stadium as being just something different,” said Manasseh, who was not yet 10 for those games. “There weren’t a lot of nationally televised games at night back then,” he said.
He added that the atmosphere itself helped set LSU apart.
“It was a fantastic environment that was just different,” Manasseh said, not realizing he was quoting Kiffin. “A night game in Tiger Stadium was just different.”
LSU did get another ABC night game in Tiger Stadium on Thanksgiving Night in 1973, when No. 2 Alabama beat No.
7 LSU 21-7. Manasseh also noted that Alabama and Bear Bryant were part of the first nationally televised college football regular-season game in prime time, a 33-32 win over Ole Miss and Manning on Oct. 4, 1969, at Legion Field in Birmingham on ABC.
Tiger Stadium’s run of big national night games kept building. LSU also hosted an ABC night game to open the 1981 season against Alabama, and the Crimson Tide won 24-7. From 1984 through 2026, LSU has had at least one nationally televised night game in Tiger Stadium every year except 1999.
This Saturday won’t be at home, but LSU is back in the national spotlight anyway. The No.
7 Tigers, 2-0, will be on ABC at No. 8 Ole Miss, 2-0, in the first top-10 matchup in the LSU-Ole Miss rivalry since Nov.
3, 1962. That night, No.
6 Ole Miss beat No. 4 LSU 15-7 in Tiger Stadium in a non-televised game.
For Manasseh, that’s not just another date on the calendar. He called Ole Miss LSU’s biggest rivalry.
“The Ole Miss rivalry is the number one rivalry for LSU,” he said. “Alabama’s been a bigger rivalry the last 20 years because Nick Saban was at Alabama (from 2007-23).”
Saban, who coached LSU from 2000-05 before leaving for the Miami Dolphins and then Alabama, won LSU’s first national championship since 1958 in the 2003 season and later captured six at Alabama. He’ll be at the game in Oxford on Saturday as part of the ESPN College GameDay crew.
“But overall, LSU-Ole Miss is the rivalry,” Manasseh said. “I used to wear a “Go To Hell Ole Miss” T-Shirt under my shirt to U-High.”
And he’s not hedging on the outcome.
“We’re going to win easy,” he said. “We’re going to win by two scores at least.
Everybody right now is so excited about the future. They’re so excited about what’s happening and the chances of - not just winning this season, but everybody’s looking at this like LSU’s got a chance to do what we’ve wanted to do for so long.
And that’s to have a real sustained winning program that wins championships for five, six or 10 years.”
In Other News...
Lane Kiffin Just Added More Heat To LSU's Ole Miss Rivalry
Few SEC matchups carry as much history as LSU and Ole Miss, a rivalry that dates to 1894 and has grown into the Magnolia Bowl since 2008. The Tigers have controlled the series overall, leading 64-44-4, and the annual meeting has produced its share of memorable nights, from the 1959 Halloween game to the famed 1972 contest known as The Night Time Stood Still.
Recent history has leaned LSUs way, too, including a comeback win in 2024 that only added to the edge between the programs. With Lane Kiffin now adding more heat to the conversation, the next chapter in this long-running feud has plenty of built-in tension before anyone even steps on the field. [Read more 🡒]
Lane Kiffin Is Adding More Heat To LSUs Ole Miss Trip
Lane Kiffin has spent enough time in SEC theater to know how to lean into it, and this week he helped turn LSUs preparation for Ole Miss into a much louder scene. He invited LSU students to come out and heckle the Tigers during practice, using the chance to recreate the kind of hostile environment LSU will walk into on the road. The result was exactly the sort of charged backdrop this rivalry tends to attract, with signs, noise and plenty of pointed energy aimed at Kiffin and the team.
For LSU, the practical value is obvious: a little extra discomfort now could help when the real crowd gets involved. For Kiffin, the setting only added another layer to a matchup already carrying its own history, since he previously coached at Ole Miss before leaving in November. With the Tigers headed into that trip, the noise around practice was a reminder that this one is about more than just a football game. [Read more 🡒]
Ole Miss Just Got A GameDay Pick That Fans Will Love
The buildup around LSUs trip to Oxford already had the feel of one of the seasons biggest SEC showdowns, with the No. 7 Tigers set for a primetime meeting against No. 8 Ole Miss at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Now the stage has gotten even brighter, with College GameDay heading to the matchup and ABC carrying the game as part of a broadcast lineup that includes Chris Fowler, Holly Rowe and Laura Rutledge.
For a rivalry-like game with rankings this tight, the pregame spotlight is almost as much a part of the story as the snap-to-snap action, and this one will have plenty of it. Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee and Nick Saban will be on hand for the show, joined by celebrity guest Morgan Freeman, giving the weekend an extra layer of buzz before LSU and Ole Miss even take the field. [Read more 🡒]