Dear Tiger Fan,

What a year it has been for LSU Athletics.  For the first time in school history, every Tiger sports team participated in NCAA post-season competition.  Each and every one of our teams is in position to compete for a national title, and there are very few schools that can make that claim.

There were plenty of great moments along the way: divisional titles in soccer and volleyball ... another resounding football bowl victory ... an SEC title in men’s basketball ... a second straight Super Six appearance in gymnastics ... and plenty of individual accomplishments, too.  In the end, LSU finished No. 9 in the nation in the Director’s Cup, which measures the overall strength of an institution’s athletic program.

It all culminated with a national championship in baseball, the Tigers’ sixth title and the first since 2000.  For two weeks the baseball Tigers took Omaha by storm and created tremendous national publicity for LSU with six appearances on ESPN or ESPN2.  Your Tigers represented LSU with pride both on and off the field.

And you, the Tiger fans, broke records as well.  Over 1.5 million fans passed through the turnstiles of LSU’s various athletic arenas, the most fans to ever see LSU play at home events in school history.  You also traveled in great numbers to road events, buying every ticket available to every road football game and filling the stands in Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium to capacity.

Times are good for Tiger Athletics, but we cannot rest on our laurels.  Competition is fierce in the Southeastern Conference and we must take this opportunity to get better, to improve our performance on and off the fields of competition.

So as we look forward to the years ahead, we are closely monitoring the impact that state budget cuts to higher education will have on our university, because they will in turn have a direct impact on LSU Athletics.

LSU is winning at the highest level in part because we are able to fund our sports teams at the highest level.  Proper funding enables us to pay competitive salaries to the best coaching staff in America, it enables us to maintain some of the finest facilities in the country and it gives us the opportunity to provide the proper athletic and academic support systems for our student-athletes.

As we prepare for this budgetary impact, we will explore ways to cut costs without negatively impacting resources necessary for our student-athletes to win championships and graduate.

We will search for new sources of revenue.  For instance, you may have heard that we are working with the city of Baton Rouge to bring an annual country concert and festival to Tiger Stadium each year.  We will be innovative in creating new revenue sources.

We will be creative in developing new fans to increase attendance in those sports that are not already sold out and we will entertain fans to keep them coming back.

Ultimately we will have to look at increased costs for tickets and parking at athletic events.  We will be sensitive to the increases that have taken place in the last several years, but to remain competitive we will have to adjust ticket and parking prices.

And we will be more proactive than ever in soliciting philanthropic donations.  Private fund raising will be more important than ever before and we will identify existing and new donors who can help keep Tiger Athletics among the elite in college sports.

I appreciate the support that you and all of the Tiger Nation gave to the Tigers in 2008-09 in all of our sports.  The future is bright and I hope you will be there with us as we continue to compete for SEC and national titles.

We welcome your comments at athletics@lsu.edu.  Unfortunately we cannot answer every e-mail we receive, but please be assured they will all be read.

Geaux Tigers!

Joe Alleva
Director of Athletics