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LSU Superfan Will Attend 425th Consecutive Home Game

Vic Mackey

By Vic Mackey
in Football

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Vic Mackey

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Very impressive. His career record

Pat Dungan's Tiger Stadium record

Number of games attended: 424

LSU record: 310 wins, 105 losses, 9 ties

Number of head coaches: 12

Points LSU scored: 11,460

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The stadium in 1954

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When it comes to Tiger Stadium, you can count on three things: The crowd will be loud. The band will play “Touchdown for LSU.” The P.A. announcer will say it never rains there.

Add one more never fail to the list: Pat Dungan will be in the stands.

In 65 years, Dungan has not missed a home game in Death Valley.

When LSU played Alabama in its 1954 home opener, Dungan was there. When the Tigers play the Crimson Tide on Saturday, he’ll be there again. 

It will be Dungan’s 425th consecutive game in Tiger Stadium. And, since 1959, he’s watched all of them from the same seat in the south end zone.

“I stay till the last play,” said Dungan, 84. “I don’t care what the score or what the weather is. I stay till the last play.”

That, sports fans, is a whole lot of plays, some of which have become legendary. There's Billy Cannon’s 1959 punt return against Ole Miss. The goal line stands against Notre Dame in 1971. Bert Jones’ touchdown pass to Brad Davis with no time on the clock to beat Ole Miss in 1972. Eddie Fuller’s touchdown catch in the “Earthquake Game” against Auburn in 1988. The extra play after time expired to beat Tennessee in 2010.

Dungan, who grew up in Baker, had attended a few LSU home games as a teenager, selling soft drinks in the stands. In 1954, when LSU rarely sold out its home games, Dungan began buying $1 tickets on game day for seats in the north end zone. He'd move to one of the many empty better seats once the game began. He did that for five years, though the ticket line got considerably longer in 1958 as LSU was on its way to winning a national championship.

“I said, ‘Tickets are going to be hard to get next year,’” Dungan recalled. “I went and bought season tickets the next year, right where I’m sitting today.”

Those two season tickets on the fifth row of the south end zone upper deck cost him $30 in 1959. Today, including the required Tiger Athletic Foundation donation, they’re $1,380, he said.

That’s not all that’s changed.

Over the past 65 years, the stadium has added nearly 40,000 more seats. Only the year before Dungan began his regular attendance, the south end zone of the stadium was closed in turning the horseshoe into a bowl and bringing the seating capacity to 67,720. Today, it's 102,321.

Dungan is now on his 12th head coach with Ed Orgeron, whom he's seen coach 16 games. Before Orgeron came Gaynell Tinsley, whom Dungan saw coach 6 games; Paul Dietzel, 40 games; Charles McClendon, 119 games; Jerry Stovall, 27 games; Bill Arnsparger, 19 games; Mike Archer, 25 games; Curley Hallman, 25 games; Gerry DiNardo, 32 games; Hal Hunter, 1 game; Nick Saban, 34 games and Les Miles, 80 games.

Technological advances also have brought change, including the large video board in the north end zone, which gives Dungan a much better view when the action is on that end of the field.

And fan attire is … different.

“People go out there now who look worse than I do when I mow grass,” said the Baton Rouge resident. “When I started going out there, if you brought a date, you wore a sports coat. You went to Hunt’s Florist and bought a corsage. Some of those women who’d sit along the field, it could be 85 degrees and they’d wear a fur coat.”

For many years, Dungan brought his wife, Anne, with him. That ended after an especially hot day game in a season opener in the early 1980s.

“Anne’s makeup was running down her face,” Dungan said. “The old man sitting behind us said, ‘Miss Anne, it’ll be cooler next week.’ It was a day game, first game of the season. She said, ‘You’d better believe it. I’m going to be in air conditioning.’ She never went back.”

When LSU was in the depths of its six-year stretch of losing seasons from 1989-94, Dungan often couldn’t give that extra ticket away, though that’s no longer an issue. There are some other longtime Tiger fans sitting around him, including Mickey Caruso, who was a child attending with her family when Dungan got his season tickets in 1959. She’s still there.

But not for every game, Dungan said. His absence, however, would be noticed.

“I tell them, ‘If I don’t show up, look in the obituary column,’” Dungan said.

 

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/article_dfa6cfda-d79e-11e8-838d-0bd3c354be78.html?utm_content=buffer8c89d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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hornian

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3 minutes ago, taybo20 said:

I think at the beginning of the season we honored a super fan that hasn’t missed a home or road game since the 70s or something. And also goes to all the baseball games I think. I forget now.

Scott Wilson:

https://www.hookem.com/story/section-3-row-8-seat-1-bank-texas-superfan-scott-wilson/

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