Just a few days after landing linebacker Melvin Jones, LSU landed another Lake Charles prospect when Barbe tight-end Desean Smith called up Coach Miles and committed.  Smith is a big time player and is widely considered one of the top tight-end prospects in the nation.   All four services have him ranked four stars and ranked nationally.   Smith chose LSU over offers from Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, Florida State, Texas A&M, and just about everyone else.  As a junior, Smith caught 43 passes for 764 yards and seven touchdowns.  

Melvin Jones

Washington Marion middle linebacker Melvin Jones committed to LSU on Friday, giving LSU 17 commitments for the Class of 2013.  Jones has seen a steady rise in his stock since the end of his junior season.  He picked up offers from Texas A&M and Alabama before finally receiving one from LSU in late May.   247 Sports ranks Jones as the nation's #4 middle linebacker and the #148 player overall.   Scout.com rates Jones as the #8 middle linebacker in the nation and the #174 player overall.  While playing in Alabama's linebacker friendly system initially appealed to Jones, his final decision came between LSU and Texas A&M.   Jones also held offers from Nebraska, Ole Miss, TCU, and Tennessee among others.  

Laurence Jones

Recruiting starts earlier and earlier every year.  While most of us are focused on the Class of 2013, which won't become final until National Signing Day in February, the truth is that a ton of recruiting is being done for the Class of 2014...for players who are not yet juniors.  Prospects are attending camps, coaches are visiting schools and relationships are being built.  

So I decided to start keeping track of the Class of 2014 on the site.  I have already created The Big Board for the Class of 2014, and you can find it under the Recruiting Pages menu at the top of the page.  I contstantly update the Big Boards.  

Last week, the BCS conference commissioners met in Chicago to further discuss ideas for a college football playoff.  The group apparently reached an agreement for a basic structure of how college football's postseason should operate.  The proposal will now go to the presidential oversight committee, which consists of one president from each of the FBS conferences along with Notre Dame, who must unanimously approve the model.  They will discuss several models but with the full backing of the commissioners for a four-team model, it is expected that the presidents will approve.  

We're on the brink of finally having a playoff in college football.  But what exactly will we have?   Nobody knows for certain, but several things have leaked out. 

With the end of LSU's baseball season, we have officially hit the dead period of college athletics.  No single topic has seemed worthy of its own blog post recently, so I figured I'd just throw out some Slant Routes and cover a bunch of things together.  

RECRUITING

• Manvel, TX wide receiver Kyrion Parker decommitted from LSU just two short weeks after committing.  Parker has seen his stock rise considerably since the spring evaluation period and with the offers rolling in, perhaps he realized he wasn't quite settled on a decision.   With his high school teammate recently committing to Texas A&M, most figure that it won't be long before Parker decides to join him in College Station.   Oklahoma may be one to watch too.   I don't see any way that Parker ends up a Tiger at this point.  

LSU's Baseball season has come to an end.  The 2012 team will most likely be remembered as the one that lost to Stony Brook and that's very unfortunate because this team accomplished a hell of a lot this year.  Prior to the season, my expectations for this group were to contend in the SEC and host a regional.  They exceeded that.  They won the conference outright and earned a National Seed.  All in all, I believe that Coach Maineri accomplished more with this team than the talent would indicate possible, and he deserves a lot of credit for that. 

Throughout the season, I'm not sure I ever believed this was one that could win it all.  It just didn't "seem" like a national championship team.   Then they swept Arkansas, and I got pretty excited.  After winning a road series against Florida, and then doing the same in Columbia, SC, I said "Hell, why not us?".   After all, if our boys could win seven of nine games against teams who were ultimately Omaha bound, then they could do anything.   Or so I thought.  The Seawolves of Stony Brook brought us all back down to earth and exposed some of the weaknesses on this team that have been there all along. 

On Thursday evening, Marietta, GA quarterback prospect Anthony Jennings committed to LSU.   Jennings is someone that LSU offered prior to receiving the commitment of Hayden Rettig, so that tells me that LSU liked Jennings enough to be the headliner in this class if needed.  Jennings checks in at 6'2" 205 pounds and is listed as a dual threat quarterback.   He chose LSU over offers from schools such as Oregon, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Arkansas, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Ole Miss, and West Virginia just to name a few.   It seems that both Rettig and Jennings are on board with being a part of a two quarterback class, which is obviously important.  Jennings makes LSU's 17th commitment in the Class of 2013.  

Alex Bregman

The 2012 Major League Baseball Draft is in the books and LSU fared pretty well.   Unexpected things always occur during the draft, but this year, those things favored the Tigers in all but one instance.  Here is a quick rundown of where LSU players and signees were picked:

LSU is in the middle of the first of two camps to be held this summer.  A number of big-time prospects are on hand, and it did not take long for LSU to land one of them.  Manvel, TX wide receiver Kyrion Parker worked out Monday morning for the coaches and then committed before leaving campus.  We talked about Parker last week and how his stock was rising rapidly since missing his junior season with an injury.  He has nabbed offers from Arkansas, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Oklahoma and others over the last few weeks.   Parker is a physical guy at 6'3" 185 and Rivals.com named him the top overall performer at LSU's camp on Monday.  

Parker also rocks the Honey Badger 'do, so he simply had to become a Tiger.  Even though he's rated just three stars, it looks like LSU got a good one here.  For those who care about such things, I suspect he'll see his rankings rise on the recruiting sites as he continues the camp circuit and plays his senior season.  Parker makes LSU's 15th commitment in the class.  

I penned a more extensive look at the MLB Draft and how it could affect LSU about a month ago.  So this is more just a follow up and a place for you to check back throughout the draft to see where guys have been picked and to get some immediate thoughts / feedback.  I'll be updating the site with each pick and leaving plenty of comments below.  Please join in the discussion. 

Names to watch: