1944 Team: Gumbo, 1944. LD3118.G8 University Archives.
Thomas Ruffin: You had, in athletics, LSU went along with the Army and they had the ASTP [Army Specialized Training Program] program. They had no contact with the . . . direct contact with the students. They might after hours, you know. But during hours they had no contact at all with students. Nor could they participate in intercollegiate athletics. Now, the schools affiliated with the Navy, their V-12 program, like Tulane and Southwestern, they went to the same classes as civilians went to. They would not live in the same dormitory, but they would participate in social activities with the civilian students. They’d go to class with them and they could participate in football and so on and so forth. So as a consequence, schools like LSU suffered from an athletics standpoint. One year we had a bad record, I forgot was it was, seven [wins] four [losses], something like that. It was not a good record.
Jennifer Abraham: In football?
Ruffin: In football. And we still got invited to the [1944] Orange Bowl because they figured we were one of the best civilian teams around. And played Texas A&M, which is one of the best civilian teams around. We defeated Texas A&M although we’d lost to them during the regular season. But it was bad. For example, Alabama that year had cancelled its football season. They couldn’t field a good team. To find schools to play, we played Georgia twice in one year.
Abraham: Who?
Ruffin: Georgia. University of Georgia.
Abraham: Oh, okay. Twice?
Ruffin: Twice. They were army schools. So you had a sort of duel thing there and there was . . . It was just entirely different. Now, at LSU all they did was come in and fuss about the tiger [LSU mascot, Mike] making too much noise, which irked the rest of us.
Abraham: I don’t get that.
Ruffin: Well, the tiger cage . . . They moved us out of the North Stadium [dorms], moved them in. And the thing they complain about is not being able to sleep because of the tiger’s roar. Well, I put up with it before and it didn’t bother me. [laughing]
-- Thomas Ruffin, interviewed by Jennifer Abraham, 2001