Colosseums and Tigers: Why 2024 Isn’t Ancient Rome
(But Louisiana Missed the Memo)
In ancient Rome, they threw “criminals, runaway slaves, and Christians” to lions and big cats for entertainment. In 2024 Louisiana, they’ve decided to once again parade tigers around a football stadium — progress, I guess.
Since 1936, for almost eighty years, Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium — aptly nicknamed “Death Valley” in what now seems like an uncomfortably literal interpretation — featured a live Bengal tiger (of which there are currently around 2,000 remaining in the wild), known as Mike, who was paraded around the field before kickoff in a yellow-and-white cage pulled by a Chevrolet Silverado (go America), with cheerleaders perched atop the enclosure like vestal virgins. The tiger’s primary role was to produce an intimidating roar, amplified through the stadium’s sound system and meant to strike fear into opposing teams — because apparently, 102,000 screaming fans weren’t quite enough.
But in 2015, after Mike VI began “showing adverse symptoms and responses due to the pregame festivities” — a polite way of saying the tiger was visibly distressed by being treated like a circus act — the university ended the practice. Mike VI succumbed to cancer in 2016. His successor, Mike VII, would enjoy a different life, a charming life — one centered around a 15,000-square-foot habitat on campus, away from the noise and stress of game day celebrations, perhaps even finding some quiet time to read after hours in LSU’s library.
Enter Louisiana Emperor (sorry, Governor) Jeff Landry, a man who’s currently disputing ethics violations over undisclosed private flights on donor planes, recently signed legislation giving himself expanded control over the same ethics board investigating him, faced accusations of giving preferential treatment to a pedophile with political connections during his time as Attorney General, funneled hundreds of thousands in campaign funds through his own private staffing company, and has now decided that what LSU football really needed to beat Alabama this weekend (spoiler alert: they got their asses kicked) was to resurrect the ghost of circuses past and revive a practice the university itself had deemed as outdated as the gladiatorial games.
Enter Mitchel Kalmanson stage-left, a Florida-based exotic animal dealer whose relationship with big cats makes the average Roman beast-keeper look positively humanitarian. Kalmanson’s day job is selling insurance for everything from “circus liability” to coverage for dogs with “a history of violence” — because nothing says “responsible animal ownership” quite like needing special insurance for your repeatedly biting dog. His USDA rap sheet reads like a rejected plot for “Tiger King 2”: multiple citations for failing to meet even the minimum federal standards for exhibition animals (a bar so low you’d need Indiana Jones to find it), a charming 2017 incident where he reportedly euthanized two kidney-diseased tigers by shooting them, and a 2016 case where one of his tigers developed a forehead laceration from “continual rubbing… on the metal cage.”
And, in his quest to replace Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman 2, Kalmanson’s tigers escaped during UniverSoul Circus performances in both 2003 and 2004. An apex predator playing hide-and-seek with the audience. Entertainment for the whole family.
And so, naturally, after LSU themselves rejected Mike VII leaving his life of reading and relaxation to attend the game, Governor Landry shipped Kalmanson’s tiger, Omar Bradley, from Florida to Louisiana with tax-payer money to roar and win the game for LSU because a $95 million coach in Brian Kelly, a roster full of NFL prospects, and 102,000 fans aren’t enough to get the job done. But, hey, “tradition.”
For those wondering about the science behind why parading a tiger around a football stadium might be a bad idea — beyond the obvious “because it’s 2024 and we should know better” — James Carpenter, a veterinary professor emeritus specializing in exotic animals, pretty much sums it up: “I don’t think that would be in his best interest at all.” It turns out that tigers, unlike football fans, don’t actually enjoy being surrounded by 102,000 screaming humans and the LSU band’s fourth rendition of “Hey Fighting Tigers.” In their natural habitat, tigers are “isolated” and “secluded” creatures (your house-cat gets it from somewhere) not Instagram props for tailgate parties.
And yet, in several American states, you can still legally own a tiger with less paperwork than it takes to register a car — from Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Delaware, and Oklahoma, where there are literally no laws regulating tiger ownership, to South Carolina (which only realized in 2018 maybe this wasn’t a great idea), Mississippi where you just need an “Animals Inherently Dangerous to Humans” permit (points for honesty), and Missouri, where apparently letting your local police department know you have an apex predator in your backyard makes everything fine. I guess, the lesson we took from “Tiger King” wasn’t “maybe private citizens shouldn’t own apex predators” but “hey, that looks fun.”
Plus, fun fact — 98% of all exotic animals die within the first two years of being brought home as pets.
And then there’s Florida, which issues more than 4,000 exotic ownership permits annually and burns through $1.5 million in taxpayer money to employ 18 inspectors to regulate its menagerie of private zoos. While tigers and other big cats are technically prohibited from personal possession unless grandfathered in before 1980 (kudos Florida, although clearly someone had a tiger they wanted to keep they got before 1980), the state makes exceptions and provides loopholes for licensed exhibitors and facilities. So Kalmanson’s “exotic animal talent agency”, a glorified feline casting couch complete with a website that hasn't been updated since the dial-up era, qualifies him to act a professional wildlife exhibitor in the Sunshine State.
Now, as the dust settles on LSU’s loss to Alabama (as we discovered, real-life tigers can’t score touchdowns, and barely can LSU) perhaps the obvious point is the obvious point: It’s 2024, not ancient Rome. A football stadium isn’t the Colosseum, and this isn’t a gladiator match — though one has to admire Governor Landry’s commitment to treating it like one, complete with an endangered species as a prop. Let’s just hope Alabama governor Kay Ivey doesn’t get any bright ideas about bringing a live elephant to the Crimson Tide’s next home game, though given the current trajectory of college football “traditions,” that’s probably already on her desk as a proposal, next to plans for a chariot race at halftime.
Tom is a filmmaker, writer, and photographer. He's currently studying English part-time at Oxford. Here, you’ll always find new fiction or an essay on Sundays. Visit tomkalbanese.com or subscribe for more.