If you think that higher education cuts to LSU only impact underachieving academic programs, you might want to think again.  Care about LSU baseball?  Well, according to Paul Mainieri, LSU budget cuts resulted in a major loss for team’s 2012 recruiting class:

Josh Bell, an outfielder from Dallas, had committed to be part of the team’s 2012 recruiting class. Baseball Americacurrently has Bell listed as the sixth-best high school baseball player in the country. But budget cuts forced LSU to take away the legacy scholarship they were going to give Bell that would have supplemented his partial athletic scholarship, Mainieri says.

 Bell’s mother was also concerned about how state budget cuts could affect LSU’s academic standing.

 Bell is now committed to play baseball for Texas.

Honestly, budget cuts really should not matter to the baseball program.  LSU baseball has always been a top baseball program in the country (if not the top), and budget cuts won’t necessarily change that perception….

Except for when they do…

While the Legacy Scholarship can return with increased funding, we’re never going to see the #6 baseball recruit in the country again…unless we see him beating us in the College World Series…

The program is a great as it is today quite simply because of the fact that LSU spent money to make it great.  While a program like LSU’s doesn’t diminish overnight, word of mouth is a powerful thing, and events like this one certainly don’t bode well for LSU’s baseball future under the current funding scheme.  The mere fact that LSU is cutting athletic funding should be enough to show those with less understanding of the situation how dire the crisis has become.

The question is not necessarily will the State take action to rectify the problem.  The question is: how much will be lost by the time they get around to doing something about it?