BATON ROUGE — A sign honoring Billy Cannon, LSU’s 1959 Heisman Trophy winner, was unveiled in the southeast corner of Tiger Stadium after the first quarter of the Tigers’ game with Ole Miss on Saturday.
The sign represented Cannon being the only football player in school history to have his number retired. Cannon’s No. 20 jersey was retired during the early 1980s.
Cannon and members of LSU’s 1958 national championship team were honored at halftime today, 50 years after claiming the school’s first national title. Cannon was also presented with a plaque by the National Football Foundation to commemorate his election to the College Football Hall of Fame earlier this year.
Cannon will be formally inducted on December 9 at New York’s historic Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He becomes only the sixth player in the history of LSU football to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
A three-year letterwinner for the Tigers from 1957-59, Cannon was a two-time All-American and a two-time first-team All-Southeastern Conference selection in 1958 and 1959.