You're preaching to the choir here. I'm just trying to help Ray see the other side.
NOLAIrish has written up some great posts on this subject, but most SEC schools can freely transfer football players from athletic to academic scholarship because the university-wide standard for scholarship qualification is so low. So while they definitely force under-performing kids off the football team, it doesn't look like many are actually pulling scholarships or kicking them out of school.
How much more respected is ND than LSU in Louisiana? It's probably reversed, in fact.
If you expect your child to settle down in his home state, what value is a cosmopolitan alumni network?
The idea that a mother should seek to maximize the worldly success of her children (at the expense of in-group loyalty) is bourgeois and liberal. And I chose such divisive words because there are communities and cultures which reject that idea outright on those very grounds. I don't know if the Tillerys come from such a culture, but it certainly applies to much of SEC country.
I can't specifically speak for LSU in this case, but I'd be willing to wager it's similar to Ohio State's value in Ohio. Since it's arguably the most common education people have, the alumni network is almost meaningless and respect for the school takes a distant second place to the demonstrated merits of the individual. No one cares that you went to OSU---so did everyone else. It neither hurts nor helps.
I would hope that she realizes that it's just as likely he goes somewhere else as Louisiana. All it takes is meeting the right girl, finding the right job (or being drafted by the right team), or being accepted into the right graduate program and all of that expectation about coming home goes out the window.
Of course, if he goes to LSU and doesn't excel as a student on his own merits or as an athlete, he could wind up, as so many of my generation have, back in his parents' basement. Perhaps that's the plan? (Not that that's impossible at ND either).
