Displaying items by tag: LSU

With less than six months remaining until voters go to the polls to re-elect Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards or pick his replacement, there is no question the two Republican candidates have not made much inroads, although, it is still early.

Yet, in hoping to rebound, perhaps, the Republican Party seems to be looking for a bounce of some type, in this case, the growing query involves the Democrat Governor Edwards and the LSU basketball team.

The NFL was almost destroyed by the misguided actions of spoiled players who chose to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem. These unpatriotic actions were supposedly in the name of supporting social justice or fighting police brutality. Regardless of the intent, the impact on the league was very negative as attendance and ratings suffered.

How do you put a dollar value on the worth of a public official?  How about this idea. Shouldn’t receiving any salary increase be based on results? 

LSU football coach Ed Orgeron will pocket some three and a half million dollars this year, making him one of the highest-paid football coaches in the nation. He received such an enormous salary package based on results. It’s the old adage that you get what you pay for, and with Ed, LSU ended the football season winning10 games. 

Should time and work be the only criteria in paying public employees? Why not pay the governor, the secretary of economic development, the superintendent of education, and a cross section of other public officials that directly affect our lives based on a scale of how well they perform and what results they achieve? 

I picked up a recent copy of Men’s Health Magazine with a lengthy article on weight loss based on research from Louisiana’s own Pennington Biomedical Research Center.  The results were typical-eat less, eat early, breath deep, get and lots of exercise. And sugar?  The Pennington study concludes that all those naysayers who express concern over the dangers of sugar are exaggerating a bit.  “The evidence is underwhelming that sugar is much or any worse than other refined carbs.”  So great news for all you sugar addictors.  Just cut back a bit on the carbs say the folks at Pennington.

There’s always been a disconnect between the accolades LSU gives itself for academic achievement and the bottom line results that come from national rankings. Louisiana’s flagship rarely cracks the top 100 universities in the U.S., with a majority of SEC schools outperforming LSU year after year. In the 2019 university rankings by US News and World Report, LSU comes in at number 140.

It’s the end of the college football season with Clemson taking a resounding victory over favored Alabama.   The year also produced a financial bonanza for top tier football schools all over the country. ESPN has paid some 7 billion dollars for the rights to telecast just seven games a year over the next 12 years. Television revenue has doubled for major college football programs over last year. Stadiums are expanding and ticket sales are at an all-time high. So let’s ask this question-is it all about the money?

Today, the chairs of Louisiana's four public postsecondary systems - the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, the LSU System, the Southern University System Board of Supervisors, and the UL System, in conjunction with the Louisiana Board of Regents, sent a joint letter to seek funding for higher education and for TOPS.. 

by Jim W. Miller
Wait. Listen. Hear it? That squeaky, puckering sound you hear is the tightening sphincters of college basketball coaches around the land after last week’s revelations released by Yahoo Sports. One head coach has been fired, another is as good as done, dark clouds surround others and several assistant coaches have already walked the plank. The remainder, mostly innocent, are scrambling to make certain they know what their assistants are or are not doing.

I don’t normally write a sports column, but a few words would seem appropriate after Alabama’s startling victory this past Monday night in the College Football Championship game. Simply put, love him or hate him, Alabama head coach Nick Saban is the best college coach in football today, and maybe the best college coach ever.

There has been a lot of bad news out of LSU, Louisiana’s flagship university in recent weeks. Not just on the football field where the Tigers have completed a mediocre season, even though they have the highest salaried group of coaches in the nation. Campus shortcomings have raised a number of troubling questions about poor administrative decisions being made.

Ah, the wisdom found in the New York Times.  America’s newspaper (at least according to them) seems to find a reason every week to denigrate the backwards homefolks that populate Louisiana.  Certainly some debasement is justified particularly when it comes to disparaging the state’s political establishment.  But there’s one area that is sacrosanct and off limits to even the least well informed news editor.  Whatever you do or write, don’t mess with LSU football.