TULANE TO FACE OLE MISS IN FIRST-EVER COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF APPEARANCE 1C
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M o n d ay, d e c e M b e r 8, 2025
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LSU, Kiffin center stage in debate on college athlete pay U.S. House tables bill reshaping NIL after bipartisan backlash BY MARK BALLARD Staff writer
HOLIDAY MODE
ABOVE: Lou Fragoso, center, president and CEO
of Manning Family Children’s, leaps into the air as he and staff with the hospital use ropes to lead a large inflatable Christmas tree through the French Quarter for the hospital’s Holiday Parade in New Orleans on Sunday. RIGHT: A large balloon featuring the face of Santa Claus is carried through the French Quarter during the parade. BELOW: Dance troupes dressed for the holidays wave to the crowd on Sunday. STAFF PHOTOS By CHRIS GRANGER
WASHINGTON — As the top Democrat in the U.S. House took the podium Thursday to speak out against a bill to regulate college athletics, he set his sights squarely on LSU, its new football coach — and two of the school’s alumni who are among the most powerful people on Capitol Hill. “Why would Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise think it was a good idea to bring the Lane Kiffin Protection Act to the floor of the Jeffries House of Representatives?” said House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat. Jeffries posited that it might have been to please big donors to the state’s flagship university. “Legislation that would do nothing to benefit college athletes and everything to benefit coaches like Johnson Lane Kiffin, who got out of town, abandoned his players in the middle of a playoff run to go get a $100 million contract from LSU — the home state of Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise,” Jeffries said. “People are asking the question: Why did you bring this bill this week with all the other issues that the country is demanding that we Scalise focus on led by the affordability crisis that they say is a scam and a hoax?” But Scalise and supporters of the bill say it’s time to set clearer rules in a rapidly changing college sports landscape to provide clarity and safeguards for athletes.
ä See PAY, page 4A
Bisque definition vexes Louisiana health officials Food safety rules about oysters, crawfish in question
‘Like a moth to a flame’
BY ALYSE PFEIL Staff writer
Iconic New Orleans neon sign shop relocating
BY POET WOLFE Staff writer
In a cluttered corner of his New Orleans studio, Nate Sheaffer pulled a glass tube through blue flames, coaxing it with gentle puffs from a blow hose until it curled into cursive letters. Four mounted deer heads stared down from the wall above, their antlers draped with glass tubing, beside a glowing red neon sign that read: “Every damn day.” For 41 years, Sheaffer has practiced glass blowing with that kind of devotion. His right arm is canvassed in tattoos of signs
PHOTO By CHRIS GRANGER
Big Sexy Neon owner Nate Sheaffer is closing his New Orleans shop as neon signs become a dying art. Neon signs were once a beacon of cheap motel strips and roadside diners, gas stations and corner stores, ä See SIGN, page 5A cigarette ads and smoky jazz clubs.
WEATHER HIGH 58 LOW 44 PAGE 6B
State health officials want to set stricter rules for reusing shells in certain seafood dishes, which they say can risk exposure to a deadly flesh-eating bacteria that’s seen a resurgence this year. But along the way, they have run into a stumbling block and a very Louisiana dilemma: What counts as a bisque? The state’s restaurant safety code for decades has said that “Mollusk and crustacean shells may not be used more than once as serving containers.” Oysters are mollusks, and crawfish are crustaceans. Now, the Louisiana Department of Health wants to make clear that restaurants and food retailers can’t ever reuse oyster shells to serve meat that comes from a different oyster. “We had reports of folks taking shucked shells
Classified .....................7D Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Comics-Puzzles .....3D-6D Living............................1D Opinion ........................4B Commentary ................5B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
ä See RULES, page 5A
13TH yEAR, NO. 118