BATON ROUGE - While he's new to the job, Chief Marshall Walters is no game-day novice — having been with the LSU Police Department since 2002.

"Football planning is an ongoing process. It never really stops and we're always looking for ways to make it a little better and what can we change to make sure our community is safe and those are visiting the game are safe," he said.

LSU is gearing up for the first home game of the season.

"Each game brings a little something different. If you look at Nicholls, you know it's going to be more of a local crowd and understanding where those traffic issues may occur so we are looking at shifting manpower to try and address that. As opposed to if it's the University of Alabama and you have ESPN Gameday and all the nuances that come with that." 

Chief Walters says the majority of game day policing is about directing people on and off campus.

"We have a traffic operation center here that's just focused on game day traffic and they're all working together to make it as smooth and efficient as they can."

And he's no stranger to contraflow.

"That's a sensitive subject," he said while laughing.

Walters realizes it's a headache for everyone, but insists it's both necessary and always subject to improvement.

"When you think about traffic at LSU, realizing that you have a river to the west, you really only have one interstate system that you can utilize. I think over the years working with athletics, BRPD, EBRSO, the Baton Rouge traffic engineer's office, we're all working together to make this thing the best that we can — given the infrastructure that we have. There will always be challenges to that and no matter how good a plan is, one car crash, one down power line, something like that can really cause issues on game days," Walters said.