I'm just going to get ahead of this.

I fully expect Ole Miss to win today. They needed Daughtry or whatever his name is to pitch the game of his life and he did. Now they have Elliott ready on full rest. And I fully expect Oklahoma to look like they have never stepped onto a baseball field before and their pitcher to suddenly develop Rick Ankiel disease and their coach to do something incredibly mind numbingly stupid that even the worst rec league baseball coach wouldn't even fathom. I'm not sure what since it's something I can't fathom so don't even ask.

I also fully expect MSU fans to go into full woe is me mode. It's going to happen. It's just who we are. This to me, as a baseball is just as worse as Ole Miss winning a National Championship is the ridiculousness, I'm going to read from our fan base.

I'm bracing for we shouldn't have built our stadium because that was a waste, our National Championship is tainted, Ole Miss is a dynasty now, we should fire Cohen and Lemonis, how come we haven't signed every player in the portal, and that's really just probably the tip of the iceberg.

Let me address this so I can just copy cut and paste this for the next year.

1. Building the new Dude was not a waste. I really shouldn't have to even explain why. In an arms race we have the best baseball stadium. That's not a bad thing. Does that guarantee that we win titles? No. But it doesn't hurt because it shows commitment.

2. Our championship is not tainted. If they think that us having to face to rested first round pick pitchers on full rest because of COVID knocking out NC State they're stupid. Period. And if anyone thinks that NC State would have definitely beat us- they need to look at ACC history in the CWS. It's literally Virginia a few years ago.... and before them Wake Forest from the 1950's. Or they can look at the Notre Dame team that beat Tennessee this year. Saying Ole Miss winning would taint our National Championship would be like a Cardinals fan saying that the Royals winning the World Series tainted their World Series Championships.

3. Ole Miss being a dynasty is not a given. Especially since this isn't a young team and Bianco has been there for 23 years. If anything this makes baseball their best sport. And the funny thing about that as a MSU fan is we may have the same amount of National Championships, but we have more SEC titles, SEC Tournament Titles, more Governor's Cups and a winning record in the series by a large margin. Not to mention we beat them in their house this year 2/3. Not to mention we've all seen what can happen one year later.

4. You're insane if you want Lemonis and Cohen fired. Just like Ole Miss fans that wanted Bianco fired. And yeah our year sucked. Big time. And if it happens again we'll be looking for a new pitching coach. If anyone thinks that Cohen is going to allow any coach to run this program into the ground- you don't know John Cohen. We do have a coach that we know can manage a team on the big stage. And we have enough resources to hire elite assistants if we need to. If I'm Foxhall right now I have Tom House and Nolan Ryan on speed dial.

5. The portal. Everyone wants some "good news" now. And I agree we need some- badly. Building a roster is a process this time of year. With the draft being later than we're used to we're going to have to be patient because you can not expect players who are making a business decision to just commit just because we want them to. The portal isn't the only avenue that we have. We have to figure out if guys like Hancock, Preston Johnson, and maybe even Kam James are coming back- because they might and they might not and if they don't that affects what we do in the portal. We also need to figure out which one of our high school and JUCO prospects are going to come to school or go pro. Dakota Jordan coming to MSU changes things for us and how we approach the portal. But I assure you that our staff is not "sitting on their ass". Just this week we had a pitcher whose team was in Omaha and would help us out a lot in the bullpen. Now if it's August 1st and we've completely crapped out in the portal then yeah. We can criticize the staff or "be worried". But until then- chill out and be patient. And before anyone says or asks it- no it's not a NIL issue.

I'll address the other "concerns" as they come down the pike.