It's a big third down in a huge game. Auburn needs a defensive stop.
Are all 87,000-plus fans in Jordan-Hare screaming their heads off to try and distract the opposing offense? No.
Well, the ones who aren't yelling are at least clapping or making some kind of noise, right? No.
They're shaking a plastic rod with orange and blue strands at the end.
What does that do? Absolutely nothing.
Shakers look cool when the entire crowd is shaking them in unison after a big touchdown, but seeing people use shakers for anything else is baffling.
You might think that a person yelling at the top of their lungs looks foolish, but at least they are contributing their small amount of support for the Tigers.
People pumping their shakers are the ones who look foolish.
The best thing that has ever been accomplished by shakers is the orange-and-blue haze during the 1989 Iron Bowl because the shakers were paper back then.
When I was in Baton Rouge two years ago, I don't remember seeing everyone using their shaker as their primary choice for cheering.
That's why Tiger Stadium is one of the loudest stadiums in the country. Because they use their voices. And yell. And scream. And go crazy every single play.
We don't do that here. We're content to shake our shaker as hard as humanly possible hoping that somehow strikes fear in the opposition.
Another thing I was intrigued about at LSU was how interactive their student section was with the band and their cheers.
They didn't have antique cheers like "Track 'Em" or "Two Bits." They had all these crazy hand gestures and choreographed movements for each song the band played and every cheer. I would love to see our student section interact like that.
So far this season, the two away SEC schools I have visited (Arkansas and South Carolina) have done something crazy like blast the techno "Sandstorm" across the sound system and have the entire stadium jump up and down. It was awesome.
After traveling to almost every single SEC stadium, our student section pales in comparison.
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