Over the past weekend and into Monday, the LSU baseball conversation was mostly about Jay Johnson’s next roster and its embarrassment of riches on paper.

That is the immediate baseball story.

But underneath that roster discussion is another LSU story, one that is less about the next lineup card and more about what the program is supposed to do when it gets elite players to campus.

That brings the conversation to Derek Curiel and Jake Brown.

A couple of weeks ago, when LSU’s most recent College World Series stars were already showing up in the MLB Futures conversation, the larger point was obvious enough: Omaha does not have to be the end of the story for LSU players. It can be the beginning of a longer professional career. The Tigers can win while players are still wearing purple and gold, then send them into professional baseball with a championship, a better approach to the game, and a fuller understanding of pressure than they had when they arrived.

Curiel and Brown are now the clearest recent examples, having been drafted by the Pirates and Mariners, respectively, in the 2026 MLB Draft. Curiel at No. 5 was especially noteworthy:

Derek Curiel became the latest former LSU baseball star to be picked in the top five in the MLB Draft. The Pittsburgh Pirates selected him at No. 5 overall on Saturday during the 2026 MLB Draft. He joins Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews and Kade Anderson as Tigers to be drafted in the top five since 2023.

Scouts considered Curiel a consensus first rounder but most mock drafts had him going in the teens and high twenties. ESPN ranked him the No. 10 overall prospect and MLB out him at No. 12. The outfielder over performed all expectations and becomes the most recent Tiger turned Pirate, following Skenes.

MLB assigned a slot value of $8.34 million to the No. 5 overall pick but the total compensation package will likely exceed the estimate. The Pirates boast the sixth-highest bonus pool at $16.2 million, which means the contract and signing bonus will be lucrative.

Brown won’t be signing for that, but be assured he will be getting paid better than most.

Both players could have entered professional baseball out of high school. Both had enough talent to make the decision complicated. They chose LSU anyway, and their college careers now offer the kind of evidence coaches can use when recruiting the next wave of elite high school players who are staring at the draft on one side and Baton Rouge on the other.

That is the baseball side of it.

The human side is where the story gets more serious. It is something we alluded to back in 2019 with Joe Burrow, and then, even before the revelations about celebrity stars and what is expected of them started rolling in through the conspiracy airwaves. [READ “STAY YOU, JOE”]

Less than four months after we ran that article, I started seeing that world more clearly for the first time. With stories involving parties and what goes on in the dark hours of the morning afterwards, things that go well beyond the “casting couch” we’ve known about for much longer, plenty of ordinary fans have learned more than they probably wanted to know about the empire around famous athletes, entertainers, influencers, and public stars.

The lesson is not hard to see, even if most look the other way, including myself at times when I simply want to enjoy a ballgame. Talent may open the door, but the higher a young man rises, the more he is managed, branded, flattered, packaged, marketed and, at times, quietly pressured to become useful to people who do not at all love him. The world does not usually hand out money and attention without asking for something back. That can even include the slow surrender of the very character that made the man admirable before the empire ever found him.

That is why this moment is not only about Curiel and Brown getting paid and realizing their boyhood dreams.

It is also about whether the habits formed at LSU can survive when the structure around them changes. Inside the Tiger program, there were coaches, teammates, routines, expectations, and order. In professional baseball, it’s not that those things don’t exist, but the circle gets wider, richer, stranger, and less caring very quickly.

Curiel and Brown’s LSU careers should not be reduced to signing bonuses or their promising ascent to the Majors. The better lesson is that LSU gave both players pressure before the money, expectation before the glamour, and public failure before professional baseball could make every slump push them into decisions they regret. Curiel had to hit while everyone expected him to hit, carrying the daily weight of being one of the names opposing teams knew they had to shut down before the first pitch. Brown had to narrow his path, leave pitching behind, grow into a more reliable outfielder, and turn an early freshman failure at North Carolina into part of his development. Professional baseball will test them both again, and it will not care about the hype, about draft day parties, or what they did in Omaha.

Now comes the real test, the one that will determine a lot more than their bank accounts.

Can they take that leverage into professional baseball without letting it kill their souls? Can they be paid without becoming owned by the world that pays them? Can they enjoy the dream without letting the dream desensitize them to ordinary goodness, ordinary people, and ordinary obligations?

That is not just an LSU question. It is a human one. But LSU fans have reason to care because they watched them play in Baton Rouge. They watched both help deliver a national championship. And now, as those players move forward, fans are allowed to hope the same young men who handled Omaha don’t lose themselves somewhere between the minor leagues and the major league lights, or…

Somewhere out there.

It is awful, if even a fraction of the stories are true. And so now the crossroads arrive.

LSU gave them a stage and a ring.

Professional baseball will give them a new world.

The hope now is simple enough, one we hope somehow reaches them—

Walk into that world without handing it the best parts of yourselves.