To your average LSU fan, the idea of "sacrifice" to watch the Tigers' national championship victory over Ohio State meant over-extending the budget on tickets or a hi-def TV.
Tell it to Army Spc. Benton Thames.
And hold the hanky.
Of course, Thames' job description is all about the kind of sacrifice few football fans could ever imagine.
A Denham Springs native and lifelong, devout Tigers fan, Thames is one of the select few entrusted with guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
Fewer than 20 percent of the soldiers who apply can cut it. Since the round-the-clock guard was started in 1937, there has been an armed guard at the crypt every single minute of every single day. Yet when Thames earned his tomb guard identification badge about a month ago, he was only the 567th soldier in history to have been able to pin it smartly over his right pocket.
"It's the rarest badge in the military," Thames said.
Oh, to have had it on Jan. 7.
Back then he was still in training.
So Thames' LSU story really begins just before the start of the national championship game, when one of Thames' relief commanders claimed to hear an "All-RIGHT!" in the background when the Tigers won the coin toss.
Thames denies it.
But this was down in the tomb quarters, a comfortable bunker-like dwelling under the tomb where the sentinels are allowed to relax between shifts outside.
Relax, that is, if they have the badge.
If they're in training, well, they're in training, mostly in front of a mirror where they work on the discipline that allows them to never flinch or otherwise show emotion while honoring the three unknown soldiers buried there.
There's a television down there — for the badges.
The trainees, however, are not allowed to look directly at it or to react to anything that happens on it.
"Basically you're not allowed to acknowledge that it's there," Thames recalled.
So it was a tough night to be a Tigers fan/sentinel trainee.
Perhaps the most grueling drill in the training is the "Ready One" position."
Go ahead, try it at home sometime.
Extend your arm straight out, palms up. Put the butt end of a 9 1/2-pound M-14 rifle in the palm of your hand, then grip it with your fingers so that the rifle, with a cumbersome bayonet on the end, sticks straight up, making a perfect — and they mean PERFECT — 90-degree angle between arm and rifle.
Now hold it. And hold it. And hold it some more, no matter how heavy 9 ½ pounds starts feeling.
Thames' personal best was about 20 minutes. The best anybody could remember was about 30 minutes.
So, of course, with LSU lining up to kick off to Ohio State and a huge Tigers fan in the midst unable to pay attention to it, the relief commander came up with a compromise.
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