Welcome to the Bayou Bengal Briefing, SEC Country’s daily morning column covering LSU football, with LSU beat writer Nick Suss. Today, we pick the best sport at LSU, catch up on a busy weekend, kick off a new Arbitrary Analysis and much more. Enjoy!
So, I’ve been thinking …
March is a great month for college sports. Maybe the best. Men’s and women’s basketball have their tournaments, which aren’t called March Madness for nothing. Sports such as swimming, track and gymnastics hold their conference and national championships. Baseball, softball and golf get their seasons into the full swing. And, of course, there’s spring football to seep up all the attention from the sports with actual games.
But, at LSU, what sport actually deserves that attention? That’s right: Today, I want to ask the incredibly difficult question: What’s the best sport at LSU?
Taking history, enjoyability and recent success into account, here are my nominees:
Football
It’s the granddaddy of LSU sports. Nothing has a fan atmosphere quite like Tiger Stadium. And I don’t mean at LSU. I mean, period. The team is always good, which never fails to make fall entertaining. And it’s the sport most people are familiar with, making it the easiest to discuss or debate.
But there’s also the pressure. Teams this big are doomed to be victims of their own size. Every season feels like championship or bust. And two championships in the last 15 years is great. Nearly every fan base in America would trade anything for that. But it also got a coach fired. Makes it hard for football to live up to itself.
Baseball
Just look at the numbers: 17 College World Series berths, six national championships, 29 seasons with 40 or more wins, the best attendance in college baseball year in and year out. LSU defines prestige college baseball.
That said, LSU baseball is the definition of new money tradition. All 17 of LSU’s CWS appearances have come in the last 30 seasons. All six of the championships came in the 1990s or later. The tradition is probably better than football, but it sure isn’t deeper.
Gymnastics
LSU gymnastics has always been good. But it just became great. The Tigers have competed in postseason play 31 times since 1982. That’s all but three seasons. But all five of the team’s Super Six appearances have come since 2008.
Right now, though, it’s hard to argue in favor of a better program. The Tigers are ranked No. 2 in the country and just Sunday clinched the first-ever SEC regular season championship.
Men’s golf
An oft-forgotten powerhouse program, LSU men’s golf has five national championships, 16 SEC championships and three national individual champions.
Women’s track and field
Eleven indoor national championships. Fourteen outdoor national championships. Legendary athletes such as Lolo Jones. More championships than any other program in the history of the sport. But it’s been five years since the last SEC title and nine years since a national championship (that wasn’t vacated). So, the spotlight has moved elsewhere a bit.
LSU poll question
So, I put it up to you. What is the best sport at LSU? Are you voting on history, tradition, excitement, recent success or just with your heart. Vote in the poll below and I’ll recap your picks in Bayou Bengal Briefing on Tuesday.
Create your own user feedback survey
Your weekly LSU non-revenue sports recap
While we’re on the topic of LSU’s deep lineup of dominant sports programs, here’s a recap of all of the scores from this weekend in LSU athletics:
The LSU women’s basketball team got bounced from the SEC Tournament in the quarterfinals by No. 6 Mississippi State, 78-61. LSU’s men’s basketball team also lost to Mississippi State, 88-76, in its regular-season finale. As a reward, LSU gets to play in the first round of the SEC men’s tournament against, yep, Mississippi State.
LSU baseball went 1-2 this weekend in three games in Houston, Texas, for the Shriners Hospitals Children’s Classic. The Tigers shut out Baylor on Saturday behind another strong pitching performance from Jared Poché, but fell to No. 1 TCU on Friday and to Texas Tech on a walk-off on Sunday. (For more on where the LSU baseball team stands, check out my weekly LSU baseball column “Out of the Box” on SECCountry.com/LSU later this afternoon.)
As I mentioned at the top, the LSU gymnastics team clinched the inaugural SEC regular season championship with a decisive 198.150-196.600 victory over No. 3 Florida on Sunday. This marked the first time LSU broke 198 or higher since 2015 versus Georgia and included Ashleigh Gnat’s eighth career perfect 10.
The softball team went 5-1 in six games at the LSU Invitational this past weekend, outscoring its opponents a combined 38-6 in the process.
Beach volleyball defeated Stetson, 3-2, after losing to Florida State and Florida Atlantic. Women’s golf finished 17th at the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate. Men’s tennis lost to South Carolina and Florida. Women’s tennis lost to Florida but beat South Carolina.
Arbitrary Analysis, part 1
Get used to this sentence: The LSU football team begins spring practice this week. And I want to commemorate the occasion. But since there aren’t many good movies/TV shows/songs about spring, I had to stretch my imagination a bit.
Stay with me. LSU is about to take the spring practice field. Spring field. Springfield. The Simpsons.
Yep. For Arbitrary Analysis this week is my picks for the top 5 episodes of The Simpsons. Since there are so many great episodes, I’m bound to leave out a ton of fantastic gems. So, I’m going to list a bunch of honorable mentions this week to make up for it. Deal? Deal.
Let’s kick off the countdown with No. 5.
No. 5: Lisa the Iconoclast (Season 7, episode 16)
It’s hard to make a good episode about Lisa, but when they happen, they’re always my favorites. There’s Lisa the Vegetarian, Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment, Lisa’s Substitute, Lisa the Simpson and so many more.
But of all the Lisa episodes, Lisa the Iconoclast is by far the most cromulent. It’s a satire that doesn’t come off as too preachy. It’s a mystery that doesn’t get too wrapped up in its own mythos. And it’s a world-builder that shows how much heart the show’s most grounded character has.
It’s also a great Homer and Lisa relationship episode, which I’ll talk a bunch more about Tuesday, but perhaps the most impressive part about this episode is it flat out invented two words: Embiggen, which means to make something larger, and cromulent, a word that means “fine” or “good,” appear throughout this episode with only the context of themselves to define themselves. And that’s awesome.
Very few TV episodes embiggen my noble spirit like this one. That’s why it comes in as my No. 5 pick.
Come back to the Bayou Bengal Briefing throughout the week to see the rest of my countdown.
Does Leonard Fournette have a comparison?
The fine folks at numberFire, the site I got all my analytic college football comparisons from back during football season, are back at it again with combine data.
Through numbers it relayed to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, numberFire has devised comparisons for every significant player at the combine based on which historical performances their weekends most resembled.
So, who does Leonard Fournette compare to? Take a look:
Penn State running back Larry Johnson (2003) — 93.99 percent match
Michigan running back Chris Perry (2004) — 93.32 percent match
Kansas State running back Daniel Thomas (2011) — 93.31 percent match
South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore (2013) — 92.98 percent match
Northwest Missouri State running back Xavier Omon (2008) — 92.96 percent match
USC running back Allen Bradford (2011) — 91.89 percent match
Included in that bunch are two former first-round picks, one second-rounder and a fourth-rounder who would’ve gone in the first round if he didn’t tear up his knee. But aside from Johnson, who rushed for more than 6,000 yards in his NFL career, none of those guys inspire much confidence.
In fact, those other five guys combined to rush for 2,126 yards and 12 touchdowns in their respective NFL careers. And 10 of those 12 touchdowns belong to Daniel Thomas.
Does this mean Fournette is going to be a bust? Of course not. If anything, it points to the fickleness of the NFL Scouting Combine as a means for evaluating talent. Running fast, jumping high and interviewing well can only get you so far on a football field. Instincts and awareness have to do the rest.
But if you think Fournette’s comps are bad, pull open that link and check out Dalvin Cook’s. Those will really make you wince.
Speaking of the combine …
Monday is the final day of the NFL combine, and former LSU defensive backs Jamal Adams and Tre’Davious White are set to take the field to show off their skills.
But on Sunday, they took the podium to answer some questions from media. Here are some links to stories you might’ve missed from Tre’ and Jamal:
Is it Florida or LSU? Who is the real DBU? Let’s let Florida and LSU DBs debate.
White wishes he had another year to play for Ed Orgeron.
Jamal Adams thinks he should be the No. 1 pick in the draft. Can you blame him?
Tweet of the weekend
With so many guys at the combine, there were plenty of great tweets from former LSU football players this past weekend. But my favorite tweet came from current LSU footballer and recently-named fastest man in college football Donte Jackson.
I hold back a lot on Twitter, don't mention me if you go be negative because I'm not holding back no more