BATON ROUGE, La. - Hurricane Rita bruised the LSU campus, but not enough to keep the Tigers from playing Tennessee tonight in Tiger Stadium, school officials said.

"I think we avoided any significant damage that would affect the game in any way," LSU Associate Athletic Director Herb Vincent said.

The outer edges of the hurricane, which made landfall early Saturday just east of Sabine Pass, Texas, toyed with LSU's athletics complex but didn't hit Tiger Stadium hard, LSU senior associate athletic director Dan Radakovich reported after an inspection.

Vincent said Rita knocked over portable toilets, stripped away a portion of the wooden fence surrounding the Charles McClendon LSU Football Practice Facility, crumpled an awning at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium, blew away panels from the Alex Box Stadium scoreboard and bent a foul pole.

The upgrade of the Tiger Stadium west-side upper deck took a hit, but not a significant one, Vincent said.

Rita peeled off a temporary covering, where next season there will be glass for a club-level view of the Mississippi River bridge and game-day sunsets.

"That will be easy to repair," Vincent said.

Wind screens fell down and fences sustained damage at the tennis courts, and some of the temporary tents to be used at west-side Tiger Stadium portals also must be repaired, Vincent said.

"We have downed branches, overturned signs, things like that," Vincent said. "There is a lot of cleanup to be done, quite a bit to be done before Monday night."

Electrical power isn't an issue, he said.

"The campus is pretty self-sufficient as far as power goes," Vincent said.

"We never lost power during Katrina. We don't anticipate any problems with that."

LSU's grounds maintenance crew covered the Tiger Stadium playing field before Rita's rains, and the tarpaulin will stay on the field until game day, Vincent said.

He said wind blew the cover off a portion of the field Saturday morning during a squall that soaked the area, but the crew quickly recovered the field.

"It's in as good a shape as it was before all this started," Vincent said.

The end zones will feature "LSU" painted in the relatively new "Geaux" font.

The usual eye-of-the-tiger logo returns as the centerpiece.

Staff Concerns: LSU officials will meet today to discuss personnel issues for staffing the game.

Vincent said Eddie Nunez, assistant athletic director for operations and project development, has been working on securing enough workers.

"We'll use some of our sports teams if we need ticket takers or marshals," Vincent said.

Church groups staff concession stands, but some said they are unable to work Monday.

No Reservations: LSU officials aren't apologizing for plans to allow the football team, as is its custom, to stay at The Cook Hotel and Conference Center on campus the night before the game.

Lodging has been a concern in Baton Rouge since Katrina hit the New Orleans area Aug. 29. A number of Tennessee fans plan not to come for the game because of a shortage of hotel rooms in the region.

The Vols are flying in to Baton Rouge on game day, opting not to displace relief workers and evacuees to have a place to stay Sunday night.

Vincent said any criticism of LSU for putting its players in the Lod Cook hotel would be unwarranted.

"It's a campus hotel, and we take very few rooms over there," Vincent said. "We use about half as many as you would usually take for a team. The players are all that stay there - not the coaches, not an entire travel party.

"When a team goes on the road, you need a full-service hotel, with meals and other stuff, and the Lod Cook center has some of that but isn't a full-service hotel. It's not like we could move out and say, 'Tennessee, you take it.' It wouldn't meet their needs."

LSU's share of rooms there wouldn't begin to accommodate every Tennessee fan who wants to attend the game, Vincent said.

"We feel OK about having our normal game routine," he said. "We didn't remove any evacuees from the hotel.

It's a campus hotel, an alumni hotel, with each room sponsored individually by alumni."