The moment that former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel stepped on the gridiron, all eyes instantly gravitated toward him.

LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson didn’t hold back regarding the talent the Tigers have been able to attract to the program. Especially when it comes to the pitching department.

Johnson has led LSU to two national championships over the last three years and it seems like the program breeds pitching. Home grown or transfer portal, it doesn’t matter. Heck, look at Paul Skenes coming over from Air Force and is now one of the premier aces in Major League Baseball.

So, Johnson already made his recruiting pitch for anyone in the portal. If you want to be a star and win in 2026, come to Baton Rouge.

“When I came here, it was obviously LSU, there were great foundational players in the program. Dylan Crewes, best player I’ve ever coached. You know, got to coach him for two years. Tre Morgan, those guys, but we really had to elevate the talent, pitching talent, to compete for a national championship, and we’ve been able to do that,” Johnson told Sirius XM. “So I’d say the first effort is the recruiting effort, you know, with our whole staff … and really trying to track those top guys. Then it’s, you know, a lot of programs will talk about developing but you can really point to the track record right now. (In) 2023, we broke an SEC record for players drafted.

“I think it was 13. I think nine of those were pitchers. Last year we had nine pitchers drafted again, which was also an SEC record. Yeah, the number one pick was Skenes. I think Kade Anderson’s got a great chance to be the number one pick.” 

The proof is in the pudding for Johnson and LSU. It’s not just his words and promises, it’s the action on the baseball diamond. If LSU goes onto win another title next season, in large part due to pitching, then it’s just the latest example of their pitching factory.

“You can not objectively look at it and go, like especially if you’re a transfer portal pitcher, nobody has a better plan for you for one year to get where you want to go than LSU,” Johnson said. “I think over the past 20 years, there is no argument that the best pitching coach in college baseball (is Nate Yeskie) I’ve been to Omaha with four different programs, won national championships now with two. And then we have another director of pitching development named Jamie Tutko, who’s exceptional and blends coach Yeskie’s experience … to feel for players with a lot of this New Age stuff. 

“And then, my role is just deciding who and deciding when and having a relationship with player to know how to get them on track with what they need in the game at a certain time. And I just think it’s the spot. And I really believe that doing well at LSU helps players and pitchers more than doing well at other schools, and that impacts them in the Major League Baseball draft. We like what we have going right now, and we’re looking for the next wave as we speak.”

The NCAA could learn a lesson from the guacamole I made last week. The avocados were pristinely ripe, the tomatoes profoundly plump, and the spices masterfully balanced. My first taste test was so good, it generated an involuntary eyebrow raise. But then a small, never-satisfied voice in the back of my head urged me to make what was perfect even better. “Add salt,” it goaded. “Just a pinch to make this guac truly mind-blowing.” So, I did. After all, it was just a little bit more of a good thing, right? But with a single shake of the salt shaker, my perfect guacamole ceased to exist, diminished by my unsuppressible instinct for perpetual tweaking. It went from magnificent to mediocre with one bad decision.

The NCAA basketball tournament is my unsalted guacamole.

With 68 teams in the field, it is one of the best events in all of sports. The drama is exquisite, the competition impeccable, and for the NCAA overlords, the profits are bountiful. And yet, those same executives stuffing cash into crevices they didn’t even know existed are greedy for more, looking to squeeze every last drop of yolk from their golden goose.

In the coming weeks, the NCAA will decide on whether or not to expand the NCAA tournament to 76 games, effectively adding eight more at-large teams to the round currently dubbed the First Four. I’m sure there may be a few teams who find themselves consistently on Joe Lunardi’s bubble that would welcome a lower threshold for entry, but as CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander puts it, very few sports topics have less public support than changing the tournament.

Show me the money

Let’s be clear: this is not an effort to showcase a broader swath of collegiate talent on the national stage or any other faux competition-related rationale you might hear. This is an unadulterated money-grab, plain and simple. Eight more teams mean four additional games to which the NCAA can market and sell to CBS, which can, in turn, hawk advertisements to eyeball-hungry companies. That’s it.

To be fair, part of this financial desire is not for the Scrooge McDuck-like reasons I just stereotyped. In this emerging era of an increasingly growing number of bank accounts to which universities are legally obligated to contribute, the need for additional revenue isn’t purely buying a second yacht for the NCAA president. Ideally, these additional funds will be distributed to schools for their player budget.

It is a complicated payment model, but reports showed the SEC received $70 million from the 2025 NCAA tournament, money that, at least in part, filtered down to the schools. No doubt, more than a few athletic directors are channeling their inner Oliver Twist since the House settlement, holding out their empty bowl to their conference executives and sheepishly asking for more.

However, this fiscally-first line of thinking minimizes the importance of the beautiful product on the court to an ordinary product on a store shelf. Approaching this decision strictly in terms of profit casts aside the impact that expanding to 76 teams would have on the remarkable entity itself. Remember, March Madness isn’t just a collegiate tournament; it is a cultural event.

Don’t mess with a cultural phenomenon

All around the world, hardcore fanatics and casuals alike fill out brackets in both friendly and high-stakes competitions to determine the best prognosticator of their group. Of course, most online bracket challenges don’t even start until the first weekend, ignoring the First Four games out of the universal understanding that everyone has a handful of friends and coworkers who are never going to have their bracket filled out by Tuesday night.

Perhaps the same mindset of “The tournament doesn’t really start until Thursday” would persist if the First Four became the First Twelve, but if anything, this quirky truism exemplifies how meaningless those First Twelve games would be viewed.

Moreover, these additional eight teams, who would otherwise be making NIT plans, are not exactly going to showcase the best college basketball has to offer. This is going to be the equivalent of Wednesday of the SEC tournament, when a sub-.500 LSU team faces off against Vanderbilt in an empty arena. Sure, people will tune in because it is still technically the NCAA tournament, but it requires a level of sacrifice to postseason basketball quality that most fans are unwilling to make.

To stick with the food and drink analogies, expanding to 76 teams only dilutes an otherwise delicious jar of lemonade.

Is the NCAA going down a slippery slope to further expansion?

Why stop at 76? In 10 years, when players and coaches demand higher salaries, is the NCAA going to further dilute this tourney to 128? Over half of the teams in the NBA make the playoffs, so why not the NCAA? To answer my own sarcastic question, a 128-team tournament would be dumb and all but negate the importance of the regular season. 76 is a slippery slope to 128.

And to those arguing that the additional teams in the field could not make it far, history would disagree. In 2011, the very first year the tournament expanded to 68 teams, one of the last four teams in, VCU, made it to the Final Four. The randomness of the single elimination format is what makes March Madness great, but further expansion gives undue credence to mediocrity.

Everyone likes it when a 16 seed with 21 wins, like Fairleigh Dickinson, upsets a 1 seed, like Purdue, but no one is on the edge of their couch when Big-4 teams with losing records like Minnesota and Arizona State, battle on a Tuesday afternoon, despite both teams having the most gaudy color combination in sports.

Please don’t do this, NCAA

Admittedly, I was against the field’s expansion to 68 teams in 2011, and yet, I have grown to appreciate the First Four as the tournament appetizer it is. The shrimp cocktail before the main course. I’m sure we all have uncles who protested the field’s expansion to 64 teams in 1985 for many of the same reasons I’ve gone through, and yet they are the first people to fill out their brackets in the family pool. Things change, and people get used to the changes over time. Such is life.

But, I’m pleading with you, NCAA. Please, please, please don’t do this. I know money is tight lately and CBS is dangling dollars in front of your face like a hypnotist’s watch. But please don’t add any more salt to the guacamole. Don’t expand to 76. It is great as it is.

The Ohio State football team has one of the best defenses and one of the best offenses in EA Sports College Football 26. The Buckeyes have the third-best offense and the fifth-best defense in the game. Defensively, that ranking seems a bit low for how much talent they have in the back seven.

Regardless, the Ohio State Buckeyes are getting plenty of respect in the new game. Jeremiah Smith is the only player with a 99 overall ranking, and he’s just a sophomore. That’s scary for the rest of college football. With him and Caleb Downs on the roster, the Buckeyes’ overall ranking in the game was expected to be high.

Ohio State is expected to be a top-three team when the preseason polls come out next month. College Football 26 agrees with that assessment, ranking them third overall in the game. They have an 88 overall rating and are ranked behind two SEC schools.

The Ohio State football team is surprisingly ranked behind Alabama in College Football 26

Texas is the second-ranked team in the game. That makes sense, considering how talented they are despite losing their starting quarterback, running back, and top receiver. They have a lot of depth behind those guys to fill those spots, and Ohio State will find that out in Week 1.

Alabama being the top-ranked team in the game is something I just can’t get behind. This is a roster that lost four games last year, including one in which they gave up 40 points to Vanderbilt. Sure, they return a lot of production from last year. But that production was part of the roster that lost four games.

Both Ohio State and Texas should be ranked ahead of them. Penn State should be, as well. That’s the biggest flaw in the rating system from EA Sports in the second iteration of the game since it came back.

With the recent growth of flag football, local coaches and SDSU football players led a high-level workout filled with energy and inspiration

The game of football is changing, but not because of flag pulling or the absence of tackling. The rise of flag football is bringing opportunities to young women to play a sport that wasn’t always accessible to them.

Within the past five to seven years, women’s flag football has seen growth across the country at the high school level.