How it will all be remembered

I thought that in the midst of our excitement about this year’s national title, I would put this year's baseball season into a larger context. It is likely that a few years from now, especially if Maineri leaves the program, it will be common wisdom among LSU fans that this is how it all went down:

LSU baseball was a sleeping giant, and Maineri is basically going for the ride. The program recruits itself, and any decent coach could have easily accomplished what Maineri did.

Smoke is the one who really turned it around in 2003 and 2004 after Skip's last team underachieved and failed to make it to Omaha, losing to Tulane at Zephyr field. It's not that Smoke was a bad recruiter or coach, his achilles heel was Wiederhold. He didn't exactly leave a bare cupboard like the Maineri-lovers would have you believe.

A couple of Smoke’s players were drafted. That means we were absoultely freaking loaded.

Also, upon arriving, Maineri reportedly made his players shave and cut their hair. This abrasive style does not fly with today's athletes, and that was evident when he ran off several good players left by Smoke. Today's college athletes need to be allowed to do whatever they want. In fact, I have it on VERY GOOD authority that Mahtook, Chad Jones, Leon Landry, LeMahieu, Gibbs, Austin Ross, Ott and Hanover are all on the verge of transferring. In other words, there will be a mutiny and he cannot continue winning here. A lot of these players are from Louisiana and would have come to LSU no matter who was coach. As for the ones from out of state... well... they'd still come here no matter who was coach.

Even though immediately prior to 2007, Maineri was winning and LSU was losing, bottom line is that LSU made Maineri, and not the other way around.