page_title: History of LSU Tigers football
section_title: Mike Donahue
hierarchical_section_title: History of LSU Tigers football / Building the program (1900–1931) / Mike Donahue
caption_attribution_description: Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana, half-length portrait, standing, facing left, gesturing with both arms, as he speaks.
context_page_description: The LSU Tigers football team represents Louisiana State University in the sport of American football. The university has fielded a team every year since it began play in 1893, except in 1918 due to World War I. It has competed in the Southeastern Conference since 1933, and in the conference's Western division since 1992. Previously, LSU was a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association from 1896 to 1921 and the Southern Conference from 1922 to 1932. There have been 32 head coaches for the team, starting with Charles E. Coates in 1893. Since 2016, the head coach of the Tigers is Ed Orgeron. LSU has played 1,221 games in its 123 seasons of play, and has compiled an all-time record of 772 wins, 405 losses, and 47 ties as of the end of the 2016 season.
context_section_description: Mike Donahue came from Auburn to be the seventeenth head football coach at LSU in 1923. The biggest win in Donahue's tenure was probably the 20–14 victory over Indiana in 1924. The final game of the 1924 season saw the first game played at Tiger Stadium, with an original seating capacity of 12,000, on Thanksgiving Day against Tulane. 18,000 fans managed to fit into the stadium to watch the Green Wave defeat the Tigers 13–0. In 1925, the team's first full season in Tiger Stadium began with shutout wins over Louisiana Normal and Southwestern Louisiana. The following week coach Wallace Wade's national champion Alabama blew-out LSU in Tiger Stadium, 42–0, which was at the time the worst home loss in school history. The 1925 team also beat John Heisman's Rice team, but ended the season with a second straight shutout loss to Tulane.
  Donahue resigned after the 1927 season, less than two months after signing a six-year contract extension with the team. LSU compiled a record of 23 wins, 19 losses, and three ties while with Donahue, which included a 5–14–2 record in SoCon games.
caption: Louisiana governor and U.S. senator Huey Long was instrumental in building the program.
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