1902 Team: LSU Photograph Collection, RG #A5000,
Louisiana State University Archives, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, LA.
They didn’t have any colors for the game . . . for the team. So there was a boy that selected blue and white but that didn’t approve . . . appeal to anybody and nobody had even really thought about it. So, my father [Charles E. Coates] shopped around at various stores on Third Street and they had some ribbon left over from the Mardi Gras celebration. But all they had were purple and gold, the green was gone. So he selected the purple and gold which we still use. And then somebody said to him, “Well, what about a name?” And there was a contingent of Louisiana men who made a very valiant and valuable contribution to the [Civil] War. They called them the Louisiana Tigers. And so my father said, “Well, we’ll call our team The Tigers.”
-- Jesse Coates, interviewed by Scott Purdy, 1993