When the family attended LSU-Tulane games, Y.A. Tittle was impressed with the tiger mascot, the campus and the football atmosphere at LSU. After he led Marshall High to the state playoffs as a senior, Y.A. signed a letter of intent with LSU. But a few days before he was scheduled to go to Baton Rouge, he was pressured into going to the University of Texas.
One reason everybody was courting Tittle was that he had asthma. In 1944, that meant he wasn't likely to be drafted by the Army.
His summer roommate in Austin was Bobby Layne, and they had barefoot races in the street in front of their boarding house. But Y.A. wasn't hooked on the ‘Horns.
When LSU assistant coach Arthur “Red” Swanson visited him the week before registration, Tittle was eager to go to Baton Rouge. Swanson insisted that he obtain the permission of Texas coach Dana Bible. Tittle pretended to call the Longhorns' coach from a telephone booth, breathing a sigh of relief when there was no answer. Then he lied to Swanson, assuring him that everything was alright. Bible howled about the “kidnapping,” but couldn't do anything about it.
When he was interviewed prior to his Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame induction in 2003, late LSU running back Jim Cason, who would be picked up in Houston after getting Tittle in Austin, called it “the greatest heist since the Brinks.”