LSU’s Entrance Is This Year’s Finest Football Theater

The greatest entrance in college football right now, and we mean this year, right now, is LSU’s theatrical field entrance. There is no real name for it. Miles leads the team out, turns at the lip of the tunnel, and then Tigers’ players start crouching, pacing forward slowly, and surging toward Miles. Miles puts his hands on helmets and mimes an attempt to hold the players back. His face in this moment is everything you want it to be: mock-terror, giddy excitement, and the twinkly-eyed composure Miles has both when calling a fake punt or running out of time in a clock management fiasco.

Miles waits, and you’re in a little slice of pure WWE theater: players snarling, flexing, and swaying back and forth, the coach, hands on helmets, barely containing his team. He surrenders, the band cranks into “Hold That Tiger,” and you remember why LSU is so ridiculously fun. They give you a little showmanship, and not the unintentional sort Nick Saban might in the middle of one of his mid-game coronaries. (I like those just fine, too, but Saban would do that over a game of cribbage or a secretary talking directly to him as soon as he would do it over a football game.)