2013 LSU Tigers

The 2013 Tiger football team will not look all that different from the 2012 team.

When I heard that 10 tigers were declaring early for the NFL draft, my first reaction was one of great concern. How could Les Miles possible replace some many outstanding players. Then I thought, how many seniors did we lose as well? Were we even going to have the full allotment of 85 scholarship athletes since we could only sign 29 new ones (back counting 4 to last year)?

After taking a look at the roster from this past season and with a little analysis, here is what I found;

Total players - 111

Seniors - 10     (3 starters, 4 players, 1 kicker, 1 left team, 1 walk on)

Juniors - 33     (9 leaving early, 7 starters, 13 players, 1 transferred in, 1 transferred out)

Sophm - 29     (1 leave early, 5 starters, 11 players, 2 ineligible, 1 transfer out)

RSFrsh- 9       (2 starters, 3 players)

Fresh - 30      (5 starters, 10 players)

The sophomores, red-shirt freshmen and true freshmen saw a lot of playing time during the season and on top of that they are very good players. I say this based on the fact that 12 of the first 22 were in this group. Compare that against the fact that we had 9 Juniors and 1 Sophomore good enough to leave early for the NFL draft, I think that says quite a bit about the quality of the depth we have to work with.

    

These two guys are only going to get better.

What else can we say about this true freshman?








The offensive line is going to be better if for no other reason that there should not be nearly as much turmoil as last year. I have a lot of confidence in Elliot Porter to take over at center. Turner and Alexander on the right side will be beasts. Williford is coming back along with Collins. Yes we will have to secure the left side but don't be surprised to see La'el Collins move into that spot.

Then to top it all off, this is the best recruiting class Miles has put together. there are some real studs to work with and possible a few more (Kemdiche and Foster) that could be coming.

Bottom line is I believe we will obviously miss the old faces we saw but there will also be a lot of familiar faces on the field for the tigers next year and we are going to win a lot of games. So stay positive Tiger Fans, the future truly very bright.

Coach

Pay for Play

Well it looks like the pay day is right around the corner for college football players. A report says that the governing body wants the schools to provide a stipend to each student-athlete of $2,000. That sounds innocent enough on the surface but let's be honest, how many schools can really afford that kind of money for all of the athletes (men and women) across the board?

Consider the MAC member Northern Illinois, their average attendance for football was a little over 15,000 per game. Assume a ticket price of $50, that comes to $750,000 per game. Now compare that to Alabama which averages 100,000 per game at home with a ticket price of $60+ or $6 million per game. In fact teams like Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and LSU that all average over 90,000 per game will even make it tough for Ole Miss, Vandy, and Kentucky to compete financially with the big boys if you pull $2,000 per athlete out of their budgets. A conservative estimate for the number of athletes at a given school is probably 300. So that is a $600,000 expense just for the stipends.

So where does the money come from for facilities improvement, recruiting budgets, coaches salaries, etc. With Title IX the way it is, you must provide the same level of support across the spectrum of athletes. Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea. Maybe this will keep some the less financially fortunate athletes from being lead astray by boosters as well avoid future legal issues. But it concerns me about opening the door to more corruption once dollars start flowing toward the athletes.

This is a slippery slope that I hope can be successfully traversed.

Let me know what you think and if you have a suggestion to make this work.