‘225’: A tested Mettenberger looks forward, mostly

“I was in the backseat of a truck,” the lanky LSU quarterback recalls of the one night a year ago that every Tiger fan wanted to talk about—the night when things went bad. “Everybody was out. It was my first camp, but it was a tradition. The last night of camp, we all go out and celebrate the end of camp. Getting through it is like freshman initiation; you’re finally part of the team. So we all go out, and I’m in the backseat of a truck, and I literally had a front-row view of what went down, and I kept my ass in that truck the whole time and high-tailed it out of there as soon as I could.” After leaving Shady’s Bar, the players returned to the dorm. Even after what happened, some continued to celebrate. “Y’all don’t understand what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he told them. “I’ve been in trouble. I got arrested in a small town in Georgia, and I was thinking no one was going to find out. The next morning I’m on the front page of the Athens paper, the Atlanta paper, every newspaper.” This is Zach Mettenberger. And if that night outside Shady’s was his first real test as a Tiger, LSU fans are going to love this kid. Read the complete cover story, by Lee Feinswog, of the new issue of 225 magazine here.