Amid the flurry of baseball signings this week, two multi-sport stars for different teams of Tigers will be abandoning their quarterbacking jobs in major-college football -- one for more money and one after more time than anyone anticipated.
First, and newsiest, is the wooing of LSU's Zach Lee by the Dodgers. For $5.25 million, the freshman Tiger will eschew any further gridiron action and report to Los Angeles. SBN's LSU community reacts about how you'd expect for fans of a team facing a lot of questions on offense as is:
1) This completely fucking sucks.
2) This does not mean the end of LSU.
3) This makes LSU extremely thin at QB.
4) This doesn't mean a young QB will suck in 2012.
5) Who the hell is Barrett Bailey?
Cooler heads prevail, eventually:
Zach Lee made the right decision. Taking 5 Mil+ now (by far the highest contract amount for an amateur the Dodgers have ever offered) rather than risking anytime playing college ball is really a no-brainier. He would need a great amount of luck to survive even a year of both unscathed, and if he showed promise at QB it might scare away the big bucks from baseball. [...] By all accounts Lee was upfront with both the league and LSU through this whole process, and that's more maturity than we usually see from high-flight-risk high school recruits.
One face (and arm) we'll get to see for a little while longer is Kyle Parker's. The third-year Clemson star was a first-round draft pick for the Rockies, collects $1.4 million -- and will stick with his Tigers, at least for this season. SBN's Shakin' the Southland reacts with some alma mater pride:
According to Baseball America, Parker just inked a 1.4 million dollar deal with the Rockies. The rest of the terms are not disclosed yet [...] But the last figures we heard in July were in the 2-2.4 million range, so this means Parker lost between a half million and a cool million to play Clemson football.
In other Clemson quarterbacking news, once-heralded slinger and internet darling Willy Korn is -- oh. Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, thanks again, Kyle!