USA Today Sports Weekly published its Top 20 prospects for the MLB amateur draft June 6-8. #8 is LSU's #2 pitcher.

8. RH Ryan Eades, LSU
Class: Jr Height: 6-3 Weight: 198.
Has struggled with consistency, but he has the arm strength, size and control you look for in a top pitcher. A lack of dominance is a concern.

Honestly, this is definitely by far one of the happiest days of my life. That was said on draft day 2013 but not by Tyrann Mathieu. Rather, the speaker was Arizona CB Patrick Peterson. It feels like I got drafted all over again when I saw his name pop up across the board. Patrick was referring to his friend and former teammate Tyrann.

• After Mathieu was arrested late last October (along with three other former Tigers, Jordan Jefferson, Karnell Hatcher, and Derrick Bryant), Peterson arranged for Tyrann to live with Patrick Sr. and his wife Sandra in Pompa­no Beach FL.
• Mathieu worked out with the elder Peterson until the Cardinals' season ended, and Patrick Jr. flew Tyrann to Arizona where he could help train him for the Scouting Combine.
• Peterson: Going back seven months ago, he declared his dream was to play with me once again. He said that was definitely his dream, and his dream came true.
• In addition to working hard on his conditioning and football skills, Mathieu must pass frequent random drug tests. Arizona GM Steve Keim: If there are speed bumps, I can promise you that it's a short leash. There's going to a point in time when they leave this facility where Tyrann is going to have to become a grown man and make the right decisions on his own.
• Mathieu: I want to do it for the Cardinals. But I want to do it for Patrick, because Patrick is one of the few who believed in me.

Talk is cheap, of course, but Mathieu knows this is his last chance. If he can't stay clean under these conditions, he never will.

We heard this last year for a different West Coast team, but former LSU and Green Bay QB Matt Flynn has the inside track to be the 2013 starter for the Oakland Raiders.

• If he does, the number of QBs who have started for Oakland since Rich Gannon retired in 2004 will stretch to 16, including another Tiger, the ill-fated #1 pick in the 2007 draft JaMarcus Russell.
• Oakland GM Reggie McKenzie: I think [Matt] can play the position. He can throw the ball, and I think he's going to be a good, solid QB.
• Flynn spent four seasons backing up Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay. During that time, he completed 82 of 132 attempts for 1015y, 9 TD and 5 INTs.
• That record prompted Seattle to sign him for the 2012 season when his contract with the Packers ended. But Pete Carroll fell in love with rookie Russell Wilson, who started all 16 games and guided the Seahawks to the second round of the playoffs. As a result, Matt became a high-priced back­up, appearing in only three games and throwing just 9 passes, completing 5.

Sports Illustrated presented its annual compilation of the top 50 sports figures in terms of total income. Here's the listing for Saints QB Drew Brees.

SALARY/WINNINGS: $40,000,000
ENDORSEMENTS: $7,800,000
TOTAL: $47,800,000

Brees, 34, had a relatively small base salary last season ($3 million) but landed a gargantuan $37 million signing bonus with his new contract in July 2012. He has traded on his family-man image by plugging products like Dove, Vicks VapoRub, Chase, Verizon, Tide and now Wrangler.

Major league umpiring must become a young person's game: Recruit from the generation comfortable with technology to replace the one frightened by it. (The average big league ump is 48 and has beenon the job for nearly 15 years.) Let's get umps at the peak of their physical and mental abilities, closer to the age of the players than of the managers. Next, train umps as administrators and facilitators, not disciplinarians. It shouldn't be open season n the men in blue, but candidates who can't handle being occasionally yelled at or who seek out confrontation should be weeded outin the selection process.Discipline should be largely taken out of the umpire's hands and given to the league office. Those same ubiquitous cameras that tell us the first base ump below a call will also tell MLB discipline czar Joe Torre that a superstar earned a suspension. We no longer need umps who can win arguments. We need umps who can stay out of them. Joe Sheehan, Sports Illustrated

This article was inspired by one that Glenn Guilbeau wrote in the 5/7/13 Tiger Rag entitled "New SEC Network a giant, 20-year conflict of interest."

Within months of each other in late 2011, two of ESPN.com's best writers, Bruce Feldman and Pat Forde, left the company when their contracts expired, Feldman moving to CBS Sports.com and Forde to Yahoo. In both cases, they cited lack of journalistic freedom as a reason for their departures.

Let's take Feldman first.

• The 16-year veteran at the network was disciplined by the network in the summer of 2011 because of his participation in a book with former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach - this despite the fact that Feldman had received permission to write the book with Leach.
• You will recall that Leach was fired by Texas Tech following accusations of mistreatment of Adam James, the son of ESPN football commentator Craig James. Many think the university used the incident as a way to get out of a long-term expensive contract.
• The network's telecast of the 2010 Alamo Bowl involving Texas Tech came under scrutiny (from Don Ohlmeyer, ESPN's Ombudsman - which means he investigates complaints about the network) for the one-sided commentary concerning the Leach-James episode. The telecast generated more complaints to ESPN (1,700 calls or emails) than any other topic that season.
• Feldman's collaboration presented an additional problem to ESPN when Leach sued the network for defamation of character.
• When the Leach-Feldman book was published in July 2011, it gave the coach's side of the story which, of course, contradicted the ESPN story of an injured player abused by the unfeeling coach.
• His first day on his new job at CBS Sports, Feldman said that, when excerpts from the Leach book made the Internet, he was told by his superiors at ESPN that he couldn't Tweet, blog, or go to the SEC media day.
• The network offered him only a one-year contract extension with no raise. In other words, they were practically inviting him to leave.

Forde's departure when his contract expired November 1, 2011, didn't have as much intrigue but still raises disturbing questions.

• Pat had long expressed his unhappiness that he couldn't report on or look into many issues because of ESPN's conflicts of interest stemming from the network's contracts with various conferences and the BCS.
• Forde also had this to say about the Longhorn Network on an ESPN Outside the Lines segment: I’m frankly a little troubled by the Longhorn Network. I know it’s been a very positive business situation I believe for our employers at ESPN, but what it does, to me, is it singles out a specific school as opposed to a collective. And when you do that, you are essentially playing favorites. … If it gets into an uneven playing field, and ESPN is part and parcel of creating an uneven playing field, then I can understand why fans of other teams would have a problem with that. It creates a perception for those of us on the dotcom side and on the news side that are covering these teams that we are going to play favorites as well. [Side note: The Longhorn Network was one of the reasons Texas A&M bolted the Big 12 for the SEC.]
• What happened to Feldman a few months earlier also contributed to Pat's decision to leave ESPN.
• Forde reportedly had been looking into the Kentucky basketball program headed by John Calipari, whose track record with the NCAA is, shall we say, less than stellar.

So what does all this have to do with the SEC Network scheduled to hit the airwaves in 2014?

• Guilbeau puts it this way: Over the next 20 years [the length of the SEC-ESPN contract], can anyone foresee an in depth, unflattering report on ESPN or one of its many spinoffs on, say, the Alabama football program?
  Over the next few months, can anyone foresee an indepth, unflattering report on ESPN or one of its many spinoffs on, say, how the SEC has allowed Alabama to avoid Georgia in the football bridge scheduling last season and this season?
  If so, perhaps, there will be another ESPN departure in the future.
• I'm writing this, of course, as an SEC afficionado (as is Guilbeau). So if we have questions about ESPN's conflict of interest, you know fans and writers covering of conferences have even more skepticism.

Some additional information about the new network you may have missed:

• ESPN owns all of the SEC network (which is officially the "SEC ESPN Network"). That contrasts with the Pac-12, which owns all of its networks, and the Big Ten Network, which is split about 50-50 between the conference and Fox.
• ESPN will also take over the SEC's official Corporate Sponsor Program as well as its online operations. As one commentator put it, The line between where the SEC ends and ESPN begins is completely blurry.
• The network will show 1,000 live events in its first year. But 550 of those will be online rather than on any of ESPN's cable networks.
• Don't worry that we'll lose the CBS SEC Football Game of the Week, though. CBS has extended its contract with the SEC for another ten years.

Many, including yours truly, have felt that ESPN has basically chosen the Heisman Trophy winner for many years now - at least since they anointed Charles Woodson as the first defensive recipient in 1997. The World Wide Leader so dominates the airwaves that whomever their commentators anoint for the award has an almost unbeatable advantage over his competitors.

A related topic: When the Football Final Four (my name for the bland "College Football Playoff") begins after the 2014 season, ESPN has the rights to the two semifinal games as well as the finals each season for 12 years.

• Will ESPN's commentators, particularly their Game Day crew, feel any pressure to tout teams (like Notre Dame, for example) that will bring better ratings for the telecasts? Members of the committee that will choose the semifinalists undoubtedly watch ESPN.
• If Texas is in the top five of the polls, how can ESPN not be accused of favoritism if its talking heads push the Longhorns for a semifinal berth - a development that will surely increase ratings on the Longhorn Network the following season?

Personal note: My access to the SEC Network will be determined by the decision of our cable provider, Cox.

• If Cox includes the SEC Network as part of the package we already get (which includes ESPNU), then we'll have no decision to make.
• But if Cox puts the SEC Network on a higher tier that requires us to pay more, we'd have to decide whether it's worth the expense. If we get to see more SEC baseball and basketball games (even in replay), I'm all for it. But if all we'll get are volleyball, soccer, golf, track, swimming, and other sports I don't care about, it won't be worth the price.