Louisiana Tech scored 80 points last Saturday, a program record. It has not beaten LSU since 1904. On Saturday night the Bulldogs take the triple option into Tiger Stadium against No. 8 LSU.
The last time Louisiana Tech beat LSU in football, it was 1904. No one alive today had been born yet.
LSU has won every meeting since: seventeen straight, from 1905 to last September, with a 62 year gap in the middle when the two schools did not play at all.
This time Tech arrives with a number that makes people look twice. The Bulldogs beat Northwestern State 80 to 6 in their opener, the most points in program history and more than any FBS team scored in the first week of the season. The same day, LSU beat Clemson 51 to 10 in Lane Kiffin’s first game as its coach and rolled up 644 yards doing it.
Louisiana Tech at No. 8 LSU
Saturday, September 12 · 7:30 p.m. ET (6:30 Central) · SEC Network+ · Tiger Stadium
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The series, such as it is
The early record is murky, the way records from the first years of college football tend to be. TigerDroppings’ LSU history page starts the series in 1901 with a 57 to 0 LSU win in Ruston and counts it at 20 wins to 1. Winsipedia has it at 20 to 2, crediting Tech with two wins, both in 1904. Both count a 6 to 0 Tech win that year, which TigerDroppings places in Ruston, one week after LSU won 17 to 0 in Baton Rouge.
After that, the shape is not in dispute. The schools met almost every fall through 1909, then in 1913 and 1914, three times between 1927 and 1930 and twice more in 1940 and 1941. The widest margin came in 1930: LSU 71, Tech 0. Then nothing for 62 years.
The modern series is five games, all in Baton Rouge, all LSU: 49 to 10 in 2003, 58 to 10 in 2007, 24 to 16 in 2009, 38 to 21 in 2018 and 23 to 7 last year. Two of those came in seasons LSU finished as national champion. Tech’s own athletics site tracks the matchup only from 2003, where it reads 0 and 5, all on the road.
Tech has not hosted LSU since 1913, a 20 to 2 LSU win in Ruston. Saturday will be the twelfth straight meeting in Baton Rouge.
The streak is the one number nobody argues about. A win Saturday would make it eighteen.
Last September
The most recent meeting was the closest since 2009, and it did not feel comfortable at the time. On September 6, 2025, Tech’s defense held LSU to 23 points and came up with the only interception of the game. The trouble was on the other side of the ball. Tech leaned on quarterback Trey Kukuk and the option, finished with 12 first downs, and lost the time of possession battle by nearly 14 minutes. LSU won 23 to 7.
The margin read like a warning about LSU. It was one. Three weeks later the Tigers lost 24 to 19 to Ole Miss. Brian Kelly did not finish the season, and on November 30 LSU hired Kiffin away from Oxford.
The Reveille, LSU’s student newspaper, cautioned this week against reading much into last year’s result, and it has a point. LSU has a new coach, a new quarterback and a summer’s worth of transfers.
Eighty points and the triple option
Tech is playing its first season in the Sun Belt with an experienced roster, much of it back from last year. Senior quarterback Blake Baker threw for 232 yards and three touchdowns against Northwestern State, in one half. Kukuk is still there too, the running half of the quarterback room, after 609 rushing yards in five starts last season. Against Northwestern State, five running backs had multiple carries on top of his. Dedrick Latulas was named the Sun Belt’s Special Teams Player of the Week. Tech’s full first Sun Belt slate is in our Sun Belt Football Schedule 2026.
Kiffin spent part of his Monday press conference on Tech. He praised its coaching, said 80 points means an offense is doing a lot right no matter who is across the field, and then put the triple option problem more bluntly than most coaches do: “For defense, that’s a disaster to play.” Tech’s defense is unusual enough, he added, that LSU has had to change a lot of its own rules for the week.
The catch for Tech is the one from last year. An option offense built to shorten the game only works if it keeps the ball, and last September it could not. Against Northwestern State, Tech showed both sides of what it can be, Baker’s arm and the option’s volume. Saturday will probably take both.
The $40 million roster
The Reveille put LSU’s roster at an estimated $40 million this week, the most in NCAA history, and Tech’s at around $1 million. Those are estimates. The gap still tells the story of this game. For how the money looks in Baton Rouge, see LSU Tigers NIL Deals 2026. For the Ruston side of the ledger, Louisiana Tech NIL Deals. For what this era means for programs on Tech’s end of that number, Beyond the $5 Million Deals.
The money showed against Clemson. Sam Leavitt ran for 113 yards and two touchdowns after throwing an interception on LSU’s first drive, which Kiffin was not happy about. LSU led 44 to 3 before backups Landen Clark and Husan Longstreet took over in the second half, and if LSU builds another big lead Saturday, both could see the field again. Leavitt is one of the quarterbacks on the Heisman board, and our 2026 SEC QB NIL Index has more on how the league values the position.
The bigger roster news came Tuesday night. Hours after the SEC amended its federal lawsuit against LSU and scheduled a vote of league presidents on whether to expel the school, LSU filled the last two spots on its 105 player roster with sophomores Gabriel Reliford, an edge rusher, and Aidan Anding, a cornerback. That closes the door, for now, on Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, the two former Ole Miss players who signed NFL contracts this summer and had been practicing in Baton Rouge while their eligibility was fought over in court. Our Magnolia Bowl preview has the backstory.
A rival on paper
Geography makes Tech a rival. The record book and the fan base do not. When someone on the LSU football subreddit asked who the Tigers’ biggest rival is, the answers ran like a family tree: Tulane for the oldest fans, Ole Miss for the generation after, Florida through the 1990s and 2000s, Alabama in the Saban years, Texas A&M lately. Nobody mentioned Louisiana Tech. LSU’s 2026 schedule makes the same point. Tech is the week between Clemson and the trip to Oxford.
It is a familiar shape: a big program, a smaller school in the same state and a history that runs one way. Texas and Texas State ended a 96 year wait last week, and Texas won 59 to 7.
Tech does not need LSU to call it a rival. It has its own, and it is back on the calendar. The Bulldogs host Louisiana in Ruston on October 10, the first meeting since 2015 and the first as Sun Belt opponents. Tech leads that series 48 to 33 with six ties and has won eight straight. We covered it in Same State, Two Worlds. A week later Tech plays at ULM. Count Northwestern State and LSU, and that makes four games against Louisiana schools before Halloween.
What Saturday is worth
Tech has waited since 1904 for another win over LSU. On paper, Saturday does not look like the night. Eighty points still bought the Bulldogs a week of attention, and attention is something college athletes can now turn into support.
Fueling an athlete on RallyFuel is conditional, not a donation: a deal only activates when its condition is met. Bulldogs fans can find their players on the Louisiana Tech page, and Tigers fans on LSU’s.
Voting on this game stays open until kickoff, and the rest of the week’s best games are in The Ten Week 2 Matchups Worth Your Votes. The scoreboard that measures which fan base turns out for its players is a different contest, and it is one where a small group of committed fans can beat a whole fan base.
LSU fans have a bigger week coming. The Tigers go to Oxford on September 19, and RallyFuel is giving away two tickets to that game.
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