WISE UP
For their capstone, LSU engineering students made a device that could save countless children’s lives.
SAVING LIVES
LSU students help give busy parents peace of mind with car seat sensor
BY LIV TEES Staff Writer
Every year on average, 37 U.S. children under the age of 15 die of heatstroke from being left in a vehicle. In Louisiana, 39 children since 1998 have fallen victim to this horrific death. With rising temperatures around the globe, this issue grows graver by the second.
Three LSU students and one mentor decided to do something about it.
For their engineering capstone, seniors Victoria Irondi, Nnamdi Dike and Trevor Perrault designed a weight pad sensor that goes underneath a car seat. The sensor is connected to a Bluetooth fob on the car keys that emits a loud screeching noise alerting the parent if they move too far away from the car.
The idea came from retired contractor and businessman David Jenks. His son’s close friend tragically lost his sixmonth-old son in July 2024 from heatstroke in a car. Understanding that parents are often thinking about a million things all at once, Jenks wanted to create a device to protect children from forgetful minds.
That device was affectionately named the WISE Device, which stands for Weston’s Infancy Emergency Device after six-month-old Weston.
“God had put it on my heart,” Jenks said. “Years ago, he spoke to me and said, ‘Take care of my children.’ I started my own business doing remodeling and kind of got away from what I feel like his will for me was. And then he put this on me and slapped me in the face.”
Jenks went to friend and former Interdisciplinary Capstone Coordinator at LSU Dave Giurintano with his idea. Giurintano suggested Jenks fill out the capstone project application, and shortly after LSU reached out asking Jenks to present his idea. Jenks’ project was soon approved.
Out of 64 capstone projects, Irondi, Dike and Perrault eagerly flocked to Jenks’ for its visible potential to help change lives.
“It was touching and reminded me why I wanted to go into engineering in the first place,” said Irondi, team leader and a now-graduate in electrical engineering.
Before the project, the three students were virtual strangers but quickly grew into a closeknit team eager to design the sensor. Irondi built the main system, Nnamdi, a mechanical engineer graduate, designed the Bluetooth key fob and Perrault, an electrical engineer graduate, built the weight pad.
Perrault, who has a six-
month-old daughter, felt especially drawn to this project for personal reasons. When he attended the project presentations in the fall, his wife was two months pregnant.
“It just made me realize that I’m not immune to forgetting my daughter in a vehicle either,” Perrault said. “I forget stuff all the time that’s related to her, and it put into perspective that it can happen to anybody and to be extra careful all the time.”
The three students would have monthly meetings at Highland Coffees with Jenks to go over project details and future plans for the project. At one of the last meetings before they presented the final model, Jenks brought Weston’s father to meet the students to reignite their fire.
“We were starting to get stuck in the project mindset and getting it done instead of what the motivation was behind the project,” Irondi said.
“After that conversation with him [Weston’s father], it reminded us why we were doing this. It wasn’t just to pass our capstone but to also make something that could make a difference.”
Moving forward, the students want to make improvements to the sensor that would allow SMS messages to send directly to the phone of the parent and an emergency contact. They also want to add vibrations to the alarm for audibly impaired people.
Jenks is working to get funding to mass produce this sensor. He’s spoken with the Manning Family Foundation and is working to connect with car seat companies as another potential sponsor.
With no shortage of accolades and awards, Jenks is confident he will find a willing sponsor.
The project was recognized by Jim Cantore on The Weather Channel, WBRZ, Channel 9
B-16 Hodges Hall
and many other news stations.
The Louisiana Highway Safety Commission also honored the students, bestowing them each with a certificate of merit and a glass statue.
The students had the mindset that with all the distractions that go on in the world, even the best parents sometimes need a little help.
“The point of the project for me was to raise awareness of what happens and what can happen,” Dike said. “I want parents to have that protection and also the sense of humility that it could happen to you.
Jenks has plans to start the Weston Foundation so that any person who can’t afford a sensor can get a free device. Any profits he receives from the sensor if it’s mass produced will be put towards this foundation.
“God’s going to put the right person in front of me,” Jenks said. “I know it because it’s his will. This is God’s project.”
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COURTESY OF LSU
LSU engineering students honored at annual Child Passenger Safety Conference in Baton Rouge, La.
SOLAR SHELTERS
New ‘solar havens’ have popped up around campus. What they do and where they came from
BY KYLA MOORE Staff Writer
Solar-powered shelters have made their way to LSU to give students an opportunity to experiment with renewable energy and charge their devices while enjoying outdoor scenery.
LSU has partnered with Spotlight Solar, a company that specializes in making aesthetic solar structures, to display the benefits of solar power while offering students a first-hand experience with sustainability.
The strategically-placed shelters, called “havens,” are tables with solar coverings around campus, each equipped with four wireless charging pads, eight outlets, four USB and four USB-A charging ports. LSU’s Institute for Energy Innovation chose Solar Havens for their design and seamless integration on campus.
While the shelters are visually appealing, they also serve an academic purpose. Arup Bhattacharya, an assistant professor at LSU’s College of Engineering, researches solar energy. Bhat-
TECHNOLOGY
tacharya uses data from the tables to contribute to coursework and research, providing
students with information about renewable energy solutions.
The haven shelters are
equipped with bifacial solar panels that capture sunlight from both the top and the bottom.
The project was made possible through a research grant funded by the Institute for Energy Innovation. The solarpowered shelters cost around $30,000 to make and install.
Institute Research Coordinator William Spatafora believes the shelters will spark conversation and bring awareness to the topic of sustainability.
“It’s gonna make students, faculty and visitors just interact with solar daily,” Spatafora said, “and so in our sense it gets them more talking about more sustainable practices.”
Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Innovation Brad Ives recommended the collaboration with Spotlight Solar. Ives previously worked with the company at Catawba College in North Carolina, which was the first college to commercially install the tables.
“I’ve seen them in action and I’ve seen how much students enjoy them,” Ives said, “so it was
a really easy decision to recommend them to Dr. Bhattacharya for LSU.”
Ives said the team intended to have something fun and attractive on campus to give students and professors the opportunity to see how solar power works in different weather.
Students enjoy their experience while using the solar-powered shelters. Vincent Pham, a mechanical engineering junior, specifically appreciated the cleanliness and convenience of the haven shelters.
“This table provides more features than I thought a table could provide, which is pretty cool,” Pham said.
The solar-powered tables can be accessed anytime in five locations around LSU’s campus, including near Patrick F. Taylor Hall, the LSU Dairy Store, Barnes & Noble and Cedar Hall/ West Campus Apartments.
“That’s what a university is supposed to do. It’s supposed to challenge people, get them to think differently, get them to observe and learn by observing,” Ives said.
This LSU library lab preserves history in painstaking process
BY JASON WILLIS Editor in Chief
If you’ve ever turned the page of a book too quickly, you know how easy it is to accidentally rip it.
Now imagine the page belongs to a fragile document that’s thousands of years old and which, if destroyed, would be lost to history.
That’s the reality for the workers of LSU’s Hill Memorial Library digital lab, one of the leading historical record digitizers in the state. There, workers carefully handle, scan and digitize hundreds of thousands of documents per year in an effort to preserve the primary sources of the past forever.
“The things that history texts are written from are the things that we have here,” said LSU Libraries Digitization Lab Manager Gabe Harrell. Hill Memorial Library holds LSU’s Special Collections, which is the largest special collection in Louisiana, according to LSU Libraries Interim Head of Digital Programs & Services Elisa Naquin. In 2023, the digitization lab produced 124,840 digitized images.
The lab is in the basement of Hill Memorial Library and holds a collection of scanners that costs more than $200,000. The walls are painted black to control color reflection during photographic scanning.
After a document is scanned, the file is run through software so
the text is recognized and searchable. The image also undergoes meticulous edits like cropping, rotating, color correcting or sharpening, all of which is done manually.
The pain staking process can’t be replaced by automation, Harrell said, because each record is non-uniform.
The operation requires caution, attention to detail and unwaning dedication.
“The things we do are often so irregular that automation makes it worse,” Harrell said. “Non-industrially produced paper, it’s never squared at the corners. Anything that is torn, [automation] doesn’t know how to interpret that.”
The physical records in Hill Memorial Library are stored away to avoid air and light pollutants. Still, they often deteriorate and need repair before digitization, leading to a frequent back-and-forth between the digital lab and the conservation department, headed by Conservation Coordinator Caroline Ziegler.
On Ziegler’s desk sits a colorful cross-stitch with the words “well, it depends.” The motto is apt for her line of work, she said; no deteriorating record she encounters has the same solution, and every fix is uniquely challenging.
When she first started in the conservation field as a student volunteer handling these fragile, valuable documents, Ziegler was fearful of making mistakes.
“You kind of treat it like you’re scared of it,” Ziegler said. “You handle it with kid gloves, and you’re kind of afraid to breathe on it.”
Ziegler now oversees three student workers who she helps navigate through that same fear, though they don’t do any repair work.
Records with tears, water damage, rusting and more come to Ziegler to be mended. The vast majority of Ziegler’s fixes are reversible so that potential mistakes can be undone. A tear might be fixed with paste, which is removable with water, or water damage might be solved by placing a record in a nipping press, which compresses and binds books.
Ziegler said the most nerve-racking job of her career was her reparation of a torn title page on one of John James Audubon’s famous “Birds of America” books because of the record’s significance.
The digital lab also works to digitally preserve historic newspapers, which Digitization Specialist Jennifer Michel said is a particularly sensitive task because the material is brittle and breaks down quickly, making it hard to handle and store.
LSU Libraries’ Digitizing Louisiana Newspapers Project, started in 2009, has grown to include records from 128 different papers in the state that were published between 1836 and 1922.
Even with the digital lab’s work, not every record in Hill Memorial’s
extensive collection can be digitized. The priority for digitization mostly depends on research value, Harrell and Naquin said.
“If a collection is used frequently, then we know that that collection has research value to a greater number of people, so that would move it up the list,” Harrell said.
Also considered in selection is if a record is badly deteriorated and needs to be preserved before it’s too late, as well as if a record has recently become topical. For instance, when a controversy unfolded in 2020 over the namesake of Troy H. Middleton Library – now the LSU Library – because of newly discovered racist statements made by Middleton,
Harrell said the lab moved to digitize records related to Middleton.
Once these pieces are digitized, many of them are housed on the Louisiana Digital Library, a website administered by LSU that has hundreds of thousands of digital records available to browse freely. Naquin said the site, a vast resource, deserves greater awareness from university students.
Naquin said the two most essential parts of the digital lab’s work are preserving these historic records for future generations and increasing access to the aspiring researchers on LSU’s campus.
“If we didn’t preserve these records, no one would,” Michel said.
COURTESY OF SPOTLIGHT SOLAR
A solar haven sits outside the Barnes Ogden Art & Design Complex on LSU’s campus in Baton Rouge, La.
JASON WILLIS / The Reveille
A manuscript is scanned March 28 in the Hill Memorial Library in Baton Rouge, La.
FOWL PLAY
A pair of ducks sit together near Campus Lake.
A Great Blue Heron stands in Campus Lake.
A pair of ducks look at the camera.
A duck stands near Campus Lake.
A Canada Goose stands near Campus Lake.
A Muscovy duck sits near Campus Lake.
Local birds and ducks near LSU’s Campus Lake July 1 on South Stadium Drive in Baton Rouge, La.
PHOTOS BY PAYTON PRICHARD PAGE DESIGN BY EMILY BOUDREAUX
ENTERTAINMENT
This LSU halftime performer and former Miss Tennessee can paint a masterpiece in 40
seconds
BY ASHLYNN BAILLIO Staff Writer
With sequins sparkling under the stage lights and paint flying in every direction, Jessica Haas does more than create a portrait; she commands a crowd.
Recognized as a pioneer in her field, Haas is not only the first female speed painter in the country, but also one of the fastest, transforming blank canvases into masterpieces in as little as 40 seconds.
Earlier this year, she brought that electric energy to LSU, dazzling fans during a halftime performance at a women’s basketball game.
Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Haas has forged an unlikely path from small-town girl to national performer, all through a career she never quite imagined.
“I come from humble beginnings,” Haas said. “I grew up in a family where sports were everything, so it’s kind of ironic that I ended up on a completely different stage.”
Haas’ journey began in the Miss America Organization, where speed painting became her talent competition entry. At the time, few had seen anything like it, and the judges weren’t quite sure what to make of it.
“I was kind of a rebel in pageants,” Haas said. “The judges were like, ‘We don’t know how to score this.’ But I didn’t care. I wanted to bring something bold and different.”
She got her big break in 2013 when she was crowned Miss Tennessee. Her unique talent quickly garnered attention, and she was soon featured in New York Magazine for her groundbreaking contributions to the art form. The magazine dubbed her “the mother of the speedpainting movement.” At the time, she was still attending Memphis College of Art.
Since then, Haas has taken her
craft across the country. In 2017, she gained national attention with a performance on ABC’s “The Gong Show,” where she painted live before a panel of celebrity judges; her performance was clocked at just 42 seconds.
But speed isn’t the only thing that sets her apart. Haas’ onstage presence, blending visual art, fashion and performance, is a hallmark of her shows.
“I’m not just slapping paint on a canvas,” Haas said. “I’m creating a moment. I wear bright colors and sequins, and I utilize my background in pageantry to engage the audience. It’s about more than the art, it’s about how the art makes people feel.”
Her recent appearance at LSU was part of a national college tour that has taken her to campuses across the U.S. for the past several years. Haas said the college crowds are some of her favorites to perform for, describing the energy as “electric.” She’s currently preparing for another national tour set to launch later this year.
“College shows are some of the most fun,” Haas said. “There’s so much energy in the room, and it’s amazing to inspire young people who might be figuring out their own path.”
In addition to college arenas, she has brought her act to professional sports stages including the NBA, WNBA and NFL. What began as a creative twist in a pageant talent portion has now grown into a full-time profession, supported by major clients and national demand.
Haas said her early days in the field were marked by the absence of women in the speed painting space. She wanted to change that.
“There weren’t any women doing this when I started,” Haas said. “It was mostly men with paintbrushes and bandanas. I wanted to show girls that you can be strong, fast, creative
PUZZLES
and glittery, all at once.”
Looking ahead, Haas remains focused on expanding her reach, continuing to perform at schools and events that value creativity and energy.
“I want to keep using my art to uplift people,” she said.
Through her art, Haas hopes to inspire young women to tap into their creative side and never doubt their goals.
COURTESY OF JESSICA HAAS
Jessica Haas holds up a completed painting in the PMAC in Baton Rouge, La.
COURTESY OF JESSICA HAAS
MUSIC
BR Symphony Orchestra named city’s best performing arts group
BY SARAH WALTON Staff Writer
Recently, Baton Rouge’s 225 Magazine released its “Best of 225” awards. The public voted on people and businesses across the city to decide who was the best of Baton Rouge. The winner of the best performing arts group was the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.
BRSO stands as the oldest arts organization in the region, bringing classical music to thousands of residents across the city not just through concerts, but education and community outreach.
The group has a symphony chorus, a symphony league and a youth orchestra to “supplement and enhance music education in schools and promote the highest standards of orchestral performance.”
The BRSO mission is to “enhance the quality of life in our community through music.”
Rebecca Smith is the director of marketing and patron engagement at BRSO. Smith said the award came as a confirmation that all of the work BRSO has done is paying off, and the
REV RANK
Rev Rank:
BY OLIVIA TOMLINSON Staff Writer
new direction Executive Director Marshall Carby is taking the organization was the right idea. Carby became executive director in September and has helped the organization grow in many ways.
One of the biggest themes for Smith and the rest of the team is making the music accessible to all. Smith said she sees a lot
of people be hesitant to engage with symphonies because they’re thought of as a high-class, boring thing.
BRSO not only does traditional symphony performances but expands out to different musical genres, lifting barriers and allowing people of all ages to engage with live music. In April, it had a “Country Hits” perfor -
mance, and in January it had a concert called “Life on Mars,” celebrating the work of David Bowie.
In May, BRSO put on the “Night at the Tony Awards” performance, part of its new partnership with the Louisiana Art and Science Museum, Concerts in the Cosmos. Together, the museum and BRSO are working to
create a series of concerts in the Irene W. Pennington Planetarium that mix music and science to make an experience unlike anything else.
“Night at the Tony Awards” featured songs from classic musicals like “Anything Goes” and “Into the Woods,” but also songs from incredibly popular modern shows like “Hamilton” and “Wicked.”
Smith sang along with several others and performed some of Broadway’s greatest hits and iconic ballads under thousands of stars. Smith said it was fun and different to be performing with the symphony and not behind the scenes.
BRSO has a multitude of concerts coming up for its 2025-26 season, ranging from classic orchestral performances to performances celebrating divas like Whitney Houston and Beyoncé. BRSO’s full season lineup is on its website, and its season subscriptions are now available. Single tickets will be available August 1. Their next performance is called “Pictures at an Exhibition” with maestro Adam Johnson at the River Center on Sept. 18.
Lorde’s new album ‘Virgin’ is beautiful, brutal and raw
Only Lorde could create an album that encapsulates a lifetime’s worth of emotions in just 34 minutes.
Ella Yelich-O’Connor, who takes the persona of Lorde, is no stranger to expressing herself through cathartic lyricism, having shared her music with the world since the tender age of 16. Known for releasing an album every four years, the New Zealand pop star had fans anticipating 2025 as the start of a new chapter and hopefully a new addition to her discography. This precise pattern officially continued when Lorde announced her fourth studio album “Virgin” on April 30.
The 11-track project was released on June 27 and earns the title as her most honest piece of work yet. Lorde has always brought new sounds in her approach to pop music, but the dark, electronic beats from Jim-E Stack and straightforward lyricism in “Virgin” is so blunt it makes each track feel as if she is speaking directly to you. Unlike Lorde’s 2021 release “Solar Power,” “Virgin” is as raw and brutal as the X-ray album cover that reveals her pelvis and IUD.
The build up to Lorde’s return consisted of making amends with Charli XCX on the “Girl, so confusing” remix, a chaotic meetup in Washington Square Park and three singles that offered a promising leadup to the album: “What Was That,” “Man Of The Year” and “Hammer.” Though released
as a single, “Hammer” appears as the first track on the album, making it a familiar intro with its raw, feminine energy.
Lorde opens up about her ever evolving identity and place in this world when she sings “some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man” on “Hammer.” This intro track previews themes of gender identity, sexuality, heartbreak, fertility and womanhood that resurface throughout the album. When the artist sings “I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers,” she explains the feeling of entering a period of rebirth, where she can finally accept the uncertainty that is to come later in life.
The hit single “What Was That” is an emotional spiral reflecting on intense moments throughout a previous relationship, questioning the meaning of the connection and the person you once were. This yearning and nostalgia that this relationship brings is also heard on “David,” the closing track, and hints at the fact that this lover could not handle the artist’s emotional depth, which led to the breakup.
The next track, “Shapeshifter,” is perfectly placed after “What Was That” since it conveys the effect of failed relationships. “Shapeshifter” takes a deep dive into the singer’s sexuality, describing the gender roles she played in preceding relationships, which is also heard on “Current Affairs.”
Lorde also acknowledges her fear of getting too intimate with a partner because of how the after-
math will affect her. “Man Of The Year” is another single that asks rhetorical questions about who will reciprocate the amount of love that she shows her partners. Lorde told Rolling Stone that this track was the song she’s most proud of off the album, describing it as “an offering from really deep inside me.”
Listeners are thrown into the midst of the pressures and expectations forced upon Lorde that follows her from girlhood into womanhood. “Favourite Daughter” discusses the complicated relationship with her mother and the generational trauma that follows it. This trauma is also heard in “Clearblue,” which places listeners into the mind of a woman taking a pregnancy test. “There’s broken blood in me, it passed through my mother from her mother down to me,” she sings, referring to the inherited trauma.
These heavy topics quickly feel like easy discussion once listeners reach “Broken Glass,” a personal song about body image and an eating disorder. “I spent my summer getting lost in math,” Lorde sings as she refers to spending her summers counting calories and staring in the mirror.
Lorde has admitted her struggle to accept her style of music in many interviews, but “Virgin” is proof that she has come to terms with the style of music she is meant to create. Rather than having a relaxed, carefree attitude heard in “Solar Power,” Lorde is here to make people feel, think and question life every time she comes out of her hiatus.
The intense visuals and industrial synths create a refreshing twist on pop music. The mature sound is similar to her 2017 release “Melodrama,” and perfectly matches the intense themes discussed throughout the project. Anyone expecting a commercial performance from Lorde should’ve expected a letdown since the artist has never stuck to the traditional pop sound.
“Virgin” takes listeners through a rejuvenating journey of
self discovery that many 20-somethings can relate to. Though she has accepted the difficulties life has thrown at her, making her who she is today, she also accepts that this is not the permanent version of herself. The entire record sounds like Lorde has come to terms with not only her style of music, but also who she is as a person, leaving fans soul-searching for their own rebirth, which could only mean one thing—the Lorde has risen.
COURTESY OF BATON ROUGE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
AP PHOTO
This cover image released by Republic Records shows “Virgin” by Lorde.
SPORTS
WHO’D WIN?
Which baseball championship team is the best?
BY ROSS ABBOUD Staff Writer
LSU baseball is the home to eight national championship trophies, second-most in NCAA history.
The Tigers have earned a reputation as one of college baseball’s most decorated programs, yet they are not known for a specific brand of baseball, like west coast or small ball. LSU’s championship teams were shaped by the individual personalities and strengths that the teams had.
For four decades, LSU has been a proven winner. From the Skip Bertman dynasty to Paul Mainieri’s reign to the Jay Johnson era, every team has found its own way to play.
Some teams were full of future MLB stars, while others were powered by grit. Some teams had offensive dominance, while others relied on defense to win the championship.
So what if we could pit them all against each other? Who would truly be the best?
According to a survey conducted by the Reveille comparing the eight championship teams – 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2009, 2023 and 2025 – only three teams were selected to win.
The three teams that shared the winning votes were the 1996, 1997 and 2023 teams.
1996
The 1996 LSU team had the chance to cement the program as one of the nation’s premier programs. After a 52–15 record, including going 20–10 in the SEC, it did just that.
The team has the highest average of runs scored per game out of all the LSU championship teams with 9.6 runs. This was backed up by the second-lowest average of runs allowed per game.
After winning the SEC Cham-
pionship, LSU went 3-0 in the regional round to advance to the College World Series, where it went 3-0 again to claim a spot in the championship game.
The championship game featured a matchup of two college baseball powerhouses in LSU and Miami. Both teams owned two national championships heading into this game and were fighting for their third.
That’s when Warren Morris hit a two-run home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to claim the championship for LSU.
Morris’ iconic home run was his first of the season. With that home run, every player who registered at least 50 at-bats for LSU had hit a home run that season.
1997
Did someone say home runs?
The 1997 LSU team was, and still is, the king of home runs. The team hit an NCAA-record 188 home runs, with at least one in each of the 70 games it played that season.
The team finished with a 57–13 record and won its secondstraight SEC Championship with a 22–7 overall mark.
The pitching was a step back from the 1996 team, but the offensive power and consistency balanced it out.
The 1997 team’s 57 wins is the most out of any team in program history.
LSU defeated Alabama 13-6 in the championship game that season and claimed consecutive titles.
2023
The 2023 LSU team had the offense and defense all season long, but the pitching as a unit left something to be desired during the regular season.
The team finished the season 54-17 and went 19-10 in the SEC.
Once the team landed in Omaha, the pitching decided to step
LSU highly rated in EA CFB 26 video game
BY ROSS ABBOUD Staff Writer
LSU fans have a lot of reasons to look forward to playing with the Tigers in EA Sports College Football 26. The game has gradually released team and player ratings leading up to the July 10 release date.
EA Sports’ release of College Football 26 is the second release of their new college football games since returning from a decade-long hiatus.
EA Sports has been making college football games annually since 1993, but in July of 2013, it all stopped abruptly. The NCAA had announced that it would not renew its licensing contract with EA because of an ongoing legal dispute regarding the use of player likenesses in the games.
up. After Ty Floyd’s record-breaking 17-strikeout performance in Game 1 of the CWS finals against Florida, the Tigers looked poised to win their seventh national championship.
But in Game 2, the Gators stunningly toppled LSU 24-4.
After a historic game by Florida, LSU responded and defeated the Gators 18-4 to claim the seventh national title in program history.
LSU was led on the mound by Paul Skenes, who broke Ben McDonald’s SEC and LSU record for strikeouts in a single season with 209 strikeouts.
The offense was led by Dylan Crews, who recorded a .426 batting average with a .567 on-base percentage. He also hit 18 home runs.
In the 2023 MLB Draft, which took place three weeks after LSU claimed its seventh national title, Skenes and Crews went No. 1 and 2 overall, the first time in MLB Draft history that two players from the same school were the top two picks of the same draft.
Results
2023 LSU was voted the champion of the tournament with 50% of the vote.
“The Skenes-Floyd duo and the bullpen stepping up in the postseason made the 2023 team,” an anonymous respondent said. “We knew they could hit and come back with the best, but the bullpen really held the team together that year.”
The other 50% was split evenly between 1996 and 1997.
“The 1997 team is one of the best hitting teams in NCAA history,” another anonymous respondent said.
While fans will debate which team was truly the best, what’s not for debate is that LSU’s legacy in college baseball is defined by its consistent ability to win championships.
But with new name, image and likeness rules, the franchise appeared under a rebranded name –instead of being called NCAA Football, it became EA Sports College Football.
After the return of the series in 2024 and over $500 million in sales during the first week of its release, EA decided to release the next annual game in 2025.
So how good is LSU in College Football 26?
Ratings
LSU is ranked as the No. 10 team with an 86 overall rating, and three Tigers appear in the top-100 players.
On offense, LSU is the No. 6 ranked offense, with an 89 overall rating, and the newly reloaded defense is ranked No. 8, with a 92 overall rating.
On offense, LSU’s three highestrated players will be Garrett Nussmeier at 92 overall, Aaron Anderson at 89 overall and Caden Durham at 89 overall. Nussmeier is the secondhighest rated quarterback in the game.
On defense, Harold Perkins Jr. is the top-rated defensive player at 91 overall, Ashton Stamps at 91 overall and Mansoor Delane at 90 overall.
The two strongest position groups are the running backs, with an average overall of 84, and the defensive backs, with an average overall of 81.
In terms of speed, LSU has eight players who are among the top-100 fastest players.
Barion Brown is the fastest player in the game and has 99 speed; Jelani Watkins has 98 speed; Durham, DJ Pickett and Michael Turner Jr. have 95 speed; and Delane, Anderson and Harlem Berry have 94 speed.
Death Valley
LSU’s advantage extends beyond the ratings with EA’s home field advantage feature. LSU’s Tiger Stadium is ranked the No. 1 toughest place to play in the game.
Home field advantage means that as the away team you see a stadium pulse meter, which measures the energy and atmosphere of the stadium.
The higher the meter, the more challenging it is to play.
This makes the away team experience the real challenge of playing on the road and feeling the nerves when stepping into the toughest stadiums in the country.
Last year, the stadium pulse caused the away team to experience louder crowd noises in big situations, squiggly routes and an inability to call audibles.
But for College Football 26, nighttime and rivalry modifiers will add another layer of difficulty, the distance of the receiver from the quarterback will affect the communication for route changes and there will be a momentum-based crowd silencing ability, allowing you a chance to flip the game.
Additionally, when you play a game in Death Valley, you will experience the new upgrades that were made ahead of the 2024 season. That means that there will be purple and gold lights during pregame presentations and touchdowns as well as the new scoreboard.
Some other LSU-related updates are color changes to the band uniforms. Instead of the purple and black uniform from last year, there are now purple pants and yellow tops, more closely mimicking the iconic uniforms of The Golden Band from Tigerland.
There’s also a new celebration that imitates the “trip out” celebration that many LSU players would do after scoring.
The cover
The cover athletes for the game are Alabama’s Ryan Williams and Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, but EA Sports also made a different cover for the deluxe edition of the game.
The deluxe edition includes players, coaches and mascots from numerous programs.
LSU does have representation on the deluxe edition with Nussmeier appearing in the middle of the cover. Coaches
For the first time in the NCAA Football and College Football games, real life coaches are in the game. There are over 300 coaches among the 134 programs.
LSU is one of the programs that features all three major coaches. Head coach Brian Kelly, defensive coordinator Blake Baker and offensive coordinator Joe Sloan are in the game.
Editions and release
The game releases on July 10.
The standard edition will cost $69.99, but EA Sports offers two other editions of the game that give early access, which starts on July 7.
The deluxe edition costs $99.99 and offers three-day early access to the game, 4,600 College Football points and additional Ultimate Team content.
The MVP edition costs $149.99 and offers the incentives of the deluxe edition with the deluxe edition of EA Sports Madden NFL 26.
PAYTON PRICHARD / The Reveille
OPINION
Someone’s Instagram will never tell you
who they truly are
In the past, you could meet someone at a dinner party, have a great discussion and that’s it. Or you small talk strangers at a concert, experience your favorite artist together and poof! They’re a distant memory.
That’s so 1985.
Times have changed. In today’s digital age, after exchanging usernames, we have a virtual presence in each other’s lives until we unfollow.
I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across someone from my past. As I moved through the sea of college graduation posts, a recent move, a new career pur-
suit, I thought, “It’s kind of weird how everything I know about them isn’t because they conveyed it to me over lunch; it’s all in photo dumps.”
I may have only spent limited time with the aforementioned person, but I know they have siblings, where they call home, their best friends, favorite hobbies, who their ex-partners are, etc. And no, that’s not because we played 21 Questions the night we met. It’s because of their social media.
That’s wild. We know so much yet so little about each other.
When we’re not experiencing life with a person, we only know their curated image, not what’s below the surface. We can easily make false assumptions about each other based on our grids.
We don’t necessarily see the private celebrations, intimate mo -
ments, heartfelt conversations or even heartache and occasional loneliness. We don’t see the full picture.
If you take a deep dive through my Instagram highlights, you could almost fool anyone into thinking you’ve known me for years.
Most of my followers are made up of childhood friends, classmates old and new, family, as well as content creators I’ve met through my micro-influencer era. Anything I’ve ever posted on Instagram has been authentic.
However, it’s not the entirety of who I am. You would actually have to take the time to get to know me to know me.
Just because I post myself enjoying life poolside doesn’t mean I’m not also dealing with life –the good, bad and everything in
between. You’re seeing a mere glimpse, as I prefer sharing more of myself with my inner circle. I don’t feel obligated to show my followers every detail of my existence. Unlike popular influencers with millions of people tuning into their lives, I’m just a girl with a private Instagram account. I don’t need to be relatable or completely transparent.
We’re in control of what we choose to share and who we choose to share with. Who we allow to have access to our lives, whether virtual or not, matters.
Recently, I was talking with my friend Camden about Instagram vs. real life. She said, “If you don’t feel comfortable reaching out to someone to say happy birthday or send condolences, you shouldn’t be following them.”
I agree.
Aside from celebrity accounts and favorite content creators, maybe our Instagram circle should mimic our inner circle in real life.
An Instagram unfollowing spree is brewing. And may the odds be ever in your favor.
At the end of the day, virtual friends only know the curated version of each other’s lives, the version where perfect bikini pics and aesthetic lattes make up our grids. That’s it, and that’s all.
Unless we’re brave enough to get to know each other in real life, we’re destined for fragmented virtual interactions instead of relationships: a curated reality.
Ava Francis is a 22-year-old journalism major from New Orleans residing in Texas.
The Reveille (USPS 145-800) is written, edited and produced solely by students of Louisiana State University. The Reveille is an independent entity of the Office of Student Media within the Manship School of Mass Communication. Signed opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, The Reveille or the university. Letters submitted for publication should be sent via e-mail to editor@lsu.edu or delivered to B-39 Hodges Hall. They must be 400 words or less. Letters must provide a contact phone number for verification purposes, which will not be printed. The Reveille reserves the right to edit letters and guest columns for space consideration while preserving the original intent. The Reveille also reserves the right to reject any letter without notification of the author. Writers must include their full names and phone numbers. The Reveille’s editor in chief, hired every semester by the LSU Student Media Board, has final authority on all editorial decisions.
GRAPHIC BY KALEB SEARLE
Jason Willis Editor in Chief
Managing Editor
Richmond