LSU “Coach O” Stadium Series Cigars
The long wait is almost over. Gridiron action returns this Saturday with the beginning of the college football season when North Carolina takes on TCU at noon ET in Dublin, Ireland. Bocock Brothers—a Houston-based, boutique cigarmaker that specializes in officially-licensed, collegiate cigars—is here to get you fired up for college football. The company has a full lineup of collegiate smokes coming this fall and it's kicking things off with a commemorative collector's box of cigars that’s designed to resemble LSU’s iconic Tiger Stadium, better known as Death Valley.
The LSU “Coach O” Stadium Series is available now on the Bocock Brothers website. For this special release, the company partnered with former LSU head football coach Ed "Coach O" Orgeron. Inside each box of this limited collaboration is a personal message and endorsement from Coach O himself. While he hasn’t been the head coach for a few years, Coach O is still revered in Baton Rouge. He was at the helm in 2019 when the LSU Tigers football team finished a perfect 15–0 and won the College Football Playoff National Championship with a dominant victory over Clemson. The exalted 2019 team lives in college football lore, as it was led by the Heisman-Trophy-winning, cigar-loving quarterback Joe Burrow and a pair of wide receivers in Ja'Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson who have blossomed into NFL stars themselves.
Each Stadium Series box holds 10 cigars, which are adorned with LSU football helmet bands. But this isn’t your ordinary cigar receptacle—the box also serves as a replica of Tiger Stadium. On the outside of the box, renderings of the signature archways that line the exterior of Tiger Stadium are the first indication of what lies within. As you open the two doors on the top of the box, the stadium takes shape. The inside of the doors transforms into grandstands, showing raucous fans packed in the stadium seats. In the very center is a replica of LSU’s field, with the iconic tiger eye at the midfield mark. The cigars sit tucked underneath the field itself, which can be lifted up using a small opening in one of the corners.
The cigars inside are all the same size, toros measuring six inches long by 52 ring gauge. The smokes are part of the company’s signature maduro blend, which features a Honduran wrapper over Honduran binder and a mix of filler tobaccos from Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay. The cigars are intended to be full bodied. As with all Bocock smokes, the cigars are made at the company’s factory in Danlí, Honduras.
The LSU Coach “O” Stadium Series is listed at $399 per box, or $39.90 per cigar. While the company calls it a commemorative release, Bocock says some 10-count refill packs will be made available once the initial release sells through. In addition to being sold on its website, Bocock says the release will also be sold via select retail partners starting in early September. As with past LSU-partnered cigar lines, the brick-and-mortar retailers receiving shipments will mostly be located in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
This is not the first partnership between Bocock Brothers and LSU, who’ve collaborated previously for the 100th anniversary of Tiger Stadium, a cigar series for the college’s baseball team and other officially-licensed core lines and limited-edition releases. The latest project represents a growing collegiate portfolio for Bocock Brothers, who’ve specialized in creating officially-licensed collegiate cigars over the past few years.
“This year opens a new chapter for LSU, and the expectations in Death Valley have never been higher,” says Douglas Bocock, co-founder of Bocock Brothers Premium Cigars. “We built the Coach O Stadium Series to mark that, by hand, the same way this program was built. This one is personal, for the coach, for the stadium and for every fan who has ever felt Death Valley shake under their feet.”
There is certainly a lot of attention on the LSU football program heading into this season. Big expectations follow the team, especially with the polarizing hire of head coach Lane Kiffin, who was dramatically poached last year from fellow SEC rival Ole Miss. The LSU Tigers kick off their season on September 5 in what is effectively a naming rights battle. They host the Clemson Tigers at home in Tiger Stadium.
