It's a college football game with national implications as No. 2 LSU hosts No. 9 Virginia Tech in Tiger Stadium before an expected sellout crowd of 92,400.

But it's much more than a football game. The game matches two schools forever tied to two of the most tragic events in United States history:

-The Blacksburg, Va., campus of Virginia Tech experienced this country's deadliest school shooting on a Monday morning, April 16, 2007, when 32 students and faculty died at the hands of semi-automatic-handgun-toting student Seung-Hui Cho, who then shot himself.

-Louisiana State's campus became a safe haven after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans on another Monday morning, Aug. 29, 2005, and nearly 200,000 New Orleans residents fled north to Baton Rouge. LSU's Pete Maravich Assembly Center became a field hospital, the Carl Maddox Field House next door became a triage unit and the Bernie Moore track stadium became a landing pad for Black Hawk and Chinook rescue helicopters.

LSU suffered no damage from Katrina, and no students died, but the university was deeply involved in the aftermath and recovery. An estimated 25,000 Katrina evacuees still live in Baton Rouge.

"There are similarities," LSU coach Les Miles said. "The process of maintaining your day to day and doing the things that are important to you and not letting things like this change your way of life. That's the issue at both places. It's about getting back to normal."

The Virginia Tech football team arrived in Baton Rouge today for its first road football game since the massacre following an emotionally draining, 17-7 win over East Carolina last week in Blacksburg.

"Things are starting to get back to normal a little bit around here," Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer said on Monday. "My goal is to get everybody focused on football."

Vinnie Burns is a Virginia Tech alum who was living in New Orleans when Katrina hit.

"For me, it's just been really heart wrenching," said Burns, who punted nine times for a 45-yard average in Virginia Tech's 26-8 win over LSU in 2002 in Blacksburg, the only other time the two teams have met. "You see it still when you go back to New Orleans, and what happened at Virginia Tech will always live inside people.

"But there is one common thread for both teams, both schools and both communities," he said. "They both have an appreciation of sports being something higher than just a game of football. Sports can be used to bring people together and to help them get over something and return to normal."

In Blacksburg, Virginia Tech fullback Carlton Weatherford of Danville, Va., watched the New Orleans Saints-Atlanta Falcons game on Monday, Sept. 25, 2006 — the Saints' return to the Superdome, the "shelter of last resort" for the mostly poor evacuees of New Orleans and a symbol of the destruction and despair that followed Katrina.

Not knowing how close he'd be to tragedy just seven months later, he watched the game "to see how a city rallied around a team after a tragedy. Seeing them play like they did was uplifting. Now, there are a lot of similarities. It's our responsibility to play well all season for those fallen students on April 16 who can't come to games anymore."

Virginia Tech linebacker Duane Brown of Richmond, Va., had a class with Mary Karen Read, who was killed in Room 211 of Norris Hall while in an intermediate French class.

"That definitely made it hit home," Brown said. "I'd talked to her a few times. That did something to me, knowing that your classmate would not be here anymore."

Virginia Tech quarterback Sean Glennon has often said the 2005 Tigers (11-2 SEC West champs) and 2006 Saints (11-7 NFC South champs) are models for the 2007 Hokies.

"We know it's bigger than football this year," he said. "When LSU and the Saints came back, you know, the people kind of forgot about Katrina."

People at both campuses remember even the little things. Like the Sunday night, as Katrina was advancing on Louisiana, when the lights went out as LSU was practicing in its indoor facility.

"It was raining outside like I've never heard it," LSU tailback Jacob Hester said. "And I remember I was the only person on Interstate 49 coming (south) from Shreveport (La.) to Baton Rouge that Sunday morning. Everyone else was going the other way to get out."