Ahead of Saturday night’s game between No. 1 Alabama and No. 3 LSU, there’s been some back and forth between the two fanbases via billboards, nonetheless.
Ahead of Alabama-LSU, we had some good ole fashioned BILLBOARD WARS
It started with LSU’s #FreeDevinWhite billboard, which was countered by a different one put up by an Alabama fan.
It all started a couple weeks ago. An LSU fan got the idea to put one up advocating for Tiger cornerback Devin White’s suspension to be overturned.
During LSU’s game against Mississippi State on Oct. 20, White received a targeting penalty and subsequent ejection. The penalty coming in the second half means White will miss the entire first half of the Tigers’ next game, which is Alabama. An LSU fan started a GoFundMe page to put the billboard up outside of the SEC headquarters in Birmingham:
#FreeDevinWhite
We’re putting up a billboard for two weeks in Birmingham, AL, the home of SEC headquarters, to let them know it’s time to #FreeDevinWhite.
A downtown Birmingham billboard will cost $2305.
An I-65 billboard will cost $1845.
We’ll fund as many billboards as possible, with any excess funding going as a donation toward the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, in honor of Devin’s love of horses.
That’s a Geaux Tigers.
A couple days later, one appeared:
“I love our fans,” LSU head coach Ed Orgeron said when asked about the billboard. “Our fans are very passionate. They’re passionate about LSU football. They’re going to do the things they want to do, obviously. That’s out of my control. My job is to focus on what we gotta control, and that’s play very well and beat Alabama. All that other stuff is out of my control.”
Despite the billboard and LSU AD Joe Alleva reportedly trying to convince the SEC to overturn the suspension, White’s suspension remains in-place.
On the same day the #FreeDevinWhite billboard was up, an Alabama fan started a billboard GoFundMe page of his own.
To counter the #FreeDevinWhite campaign, he dedicated the page to fundraise for a billboard to be put up in Baton Rouge ... advocating for Hurricane Michael relief:
Do #FreeDevinWhite billboards seem ignorant and misguided to you?
If so, this is the place for you! Donate your money more intelligently, strategically, and sympathetically.
While LSU fans waste their money on meaningless billboards based on a conspiracy theory between The University Of Alabama and the Southeastern Conference offices in Birmingham, we are starting this campaign to raise money for hurricane relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Michael, which devastated parts of the Eastern United States in early October.
By Monday of game week, it was up:
Twitter/@ba2216
It’s pretty strange to use something as awful as a natural disaster to counter LSU’s fundraiser, but if this somehow ends up generating money for the Red Cross, then great, I guess.
Either way, I’d expect nothing less than a weird billboard war to make this rivalry even more heated.
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