The Tigers sport one of the most iconic looks in college football.
Largely unchanged over the decades, LSU is best known for wearing white jerseys at home (a tradition that has gone mostly uninterrupted barring an 11-year period from 1983-94) and its classic helmets.
The primary lids for the football team have mostly stayed the same since 1980, but with a surprising number of alternate options and slight tweaks you may not have even been aware of, the history of the Tigers’ Saturday style may be a bit more interesting than many thought.
Here’s a rundown of how LSU’s helmet design has evolved over the years.
Pre-1946: Leather helmets
As was the case across college football during the era, LSU donned leather helmets up until the 1946 season. Though certainly not safe in the slightest, there was certainly a charm to these helmets. While many of us may think of the helmets from this era as being generic-colored, the Tigers implemented a purple and gold look that somewhat resembles the modern Michigan helmets.
1946-55: Hard helmets with no facemask
AP Photo/File
When the Tigers finally ditched the leather helmets for hard ones heading into the 1946 season, they opted for an old gold helmet, which you can see in the picture above from a game against Texas in 1950. Like the leather helmets before them, these lids didn’t have facemasks. That change wouldn’t come until about a decade later.
1956-71: Yellow helmets with numbers
AP Photo/File
This era is where LSU’s modern helmet began to take shape, though there were still many differences. In 1956, head coach Paul Dietzel changed the helmet color from old gold to a yellow-gold, and a year later, the Tigers began adding numbers to the side of the helmets. That’s a tradition that is mostly associated with Alabama these days, but it was quite common during this era of college football. These helmets also introduced the stripes down the center.
1972-76: Tiger logo introduced
AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky
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LSU made a…