Dylan Crews was’ the dude’ at LSU. Now the MLB draft is calling
-
Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Editor’s note: This story originally ran in March, as Dylan Crews was leading the LSU Tigers to an eventual national championship. Now he’s expected to be a top pick in Sunday’s MLB Draft. It has been updated to reflect his end-of-season stats.
From the moment Dylan Crews officially decided he would become an LSU Tiger, the Florida-raised outfielder stated he had one goal: to come to Baton Rouge and, in his words, “be a dude there.”
Now, after a third season patrolling the turf of Alex Box Stadium, Dylan Crews isn’t merely a dude. He is The Dude. The anchor of the Men’s College World Series champions, the Golden Spikes-winning dude on a roster overflowing with dudes, a pack of OG LSU recruits joined by a pack of powerhouse transfers who came to Baton Rouge from the Rockies and the Pacific in no small part seeking to play alongside No. 3. But this isn’t simply a Crews crew movement. He’s also The Dude who has all of baseball buzzing, a hum that’s becoming harder to hear as the MLB first-year player draft is upon us and this five-tool, right-handed dude sits atop many selection spreadsheets.
He has been on their radars since his pandemic-shortened senior year at Lake Mary (Florida) High School in 2020. But he knew he had work to do then, leaving high school with a frustratingly incomplete résumé. Even just one year ago he knew he had more work to do, chasing way too many bad breaking balls. And he didn’t want to leave the LSU program as it had even more work to do.
The Tigers are arguably the greatest program of college baseball’s modern era, having made 19 Men’s College World Series appearances since 1986 and winning seven MCWS titles. But heading into this year, the last of those rings was won in 2009, the third of Paul Mainieri’s 15 seasons at the wheel. That’s an eternity by LSU baseball standards, and over the dozen Series since they’d had to watch five other SEC schools win a total of seven championships. Last year, four of the eight MCWS participants were SEC schools (plus soon-to-be members Texas and Oklahoma) and none of them were LSU, who hadn’t been to Omaha since 2017. Mainieri, who recruited Crews, was sent into retirement after the 2021 season in which LSU went 38-25 (13-17 in conference play). The arrival of Jay Johnson from Arizona had shown promise, but ended in Hattiesburg last year with an NCAA Regional loss to Southern Miss.
So, the big leagues? Crews had more to accomplish before he thought that far ahead.
“The one thing I say is that a lot of people took the elevator, but I took the stairs,” the soft-spoken, 6-foot, 205-pound junior said through the curl of a polite, confident grin. “We’re all going to end up at the same place, but I took a different route and it’s the route that I chose. I’m here at LSU and having the best time of my life.”
Here’s what a stat line looks like from The Dude having the best time of his life: 71 games, 110 hits, 18 homers, 16 doubles, 100 runs scored, 70 RBIs, 184 total bases, 171 putouts with zero errors in the field, a slugging percentage of .713 and … OK, here’s the number everyone’s waiting for … a batting average of .426.
That’s four HR’s in four games for 3️⃣@__dc4__ | SECN+ pic.twitter.com/c4F14CEMuV
— LSU Baseball (@LSUbaseball) March 26, 2023
Add it all up and you’ve got college baseball’s best player on the sport’s best team. Crews saved his best for last, going 6-for-12 in the MCWS finals series against Florida, including a 4-for-6 performance in the deciding third game that delivered the long-awaited title.
Because that’s how this Dude rolls.
“I don’t think people really understand the true impact he has on the program outside of being a five-tool talent,” explained Thatcher Hurd, one of those high-profile transfer arrivals, coming to Baton Rouge after a season on the mound at Jackie Robinson Stadium for UCLA. “You come in and you’re like, ‘What’s Dylan Crews about?’ He’s got everything. He’s the best player in the country, and he’s truly a better person than a player. And that says a lot. … People worry about how we’re going to manage a lot of good talent, managing egos. And I think it really all starts with him. He’s super humble. He leads by example. And he leads with his words.”
The 21-year-old has always led by example. It’s the words that are new to his dugout repertoire. Explosive as he is on the diamond, he can be highly introverted elsewhere in life. At home, roommate and righty pitcher Ty Floyd said college baseball’s best player can be found meticulously polishing his endless supply of custom cleats (he really loves his neon SpongeBob kicks) or working on Lego sets, most recently the Avengers’ “Infinity Gauntlet.”
“I can’t sit still for 10 minutes just to build a Lego set. I don’t know how he sits there for an hour or two building the whole thing,” Floyd said. “He’s like, ‘I love it.’ Oof. Good for you. That’s that focus. Then he’ll go to the ballpark and get three hits and a homer that goes out of the ballpark. Turns it on and off.”
When Hurd and his fellow transfers arrived over summer and were joined by a group of highly touted new signees, The Dude had his newfound captain’s voice turned on. He met them all at the clubhouse door and went teammate-to-teammate, those he knew well and those he’d just met, explaining the LSU workout schedule, summer and fall practice plan and then where they were all going to dinner. And lunch. And breakfast.
“I think that’s what’s different about this team compared to the last two teams is how close we are,” Crews said, confessing that he has had to work to become more vocal. “My whole life I’ve been leader by doing, a leader by example. That works when you’re a freshman and I didn’t really have a senior year of high school. But now I speak up. To me, that’s been as big a piece of my development as even the on-field stuff.”
End 5 | Dylan Crews is a five tool baseball player@__dc4__ | SECN+ pic.twitter.com/Hx8aDyXDu7
— LSU Baseball (@LSUbaseball) May 8, 2022
“The baseball part is easy to see. I have never seen a player as complete as him in college baseball. Usually, those guys sign out of high school,” said Johnson, who led Arizona to Omaha in the first and last of his five seasons in Tucson. “But it’s the other stuff. It’s the mental game. How he prepares, how he handles success, how he handles the minimal failure that he has and ability to get right back to doing what he does is special. And it’s leadership. He’s really found his voice and the players respect him so much because of the player he is, the person he is, that when he speaks, they really listen and follow.”
Said Crews, “Everybody’s their own leader in their own way, so doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman or a senior, we are all keeping each other focused. It’s pretty special to see. It is a lot of work, but it is also pretty fun.”
Those around Crews can attest his work ethic has never been an issue at any point in his young life. Even during his preteen years when he first started working with a personal swing coach in his homeland of baseball-mad Central Florida. When hours per day taking cuts in a cinder-block garage weren’t enough, his parents found an indoor batting facility and school that had been fashioned from an abandoned car dealership. When that wasn’t enough and little Dylan got twitchy around the house his father, George, founder and owner of a commercial printing company, built a batting cage in the backyard. When that wasn’t enough, and even hitting the road with a high-level travel team didn’t satiate the teen’s hardball hunger, George and wife Kim, a nurse, worked with his school to create a so-called “Dylan Rule” that heavily front-loaded his academic schedule each morning so that he could spend his afternoons at the nearby TXNL Baseball Academy.
“You can go to the academy full time, but I also wanted to have a normal high school student experience, as much as I could anyway,” Crews said, chuckling. “So, my parents did what they always do and they worked to make it work. I am so fortunate to have them, supporting me no matter what it takes.”
These days it takes an RV, or more accurately, a motorcoach, which George and Kim Crews bought as soon as their boy moved to Baton Rouge. They purchased it secondhand from a tailgate-loving Alabama Crimson Tide fan, who was happy to sell them the rig but refused their request and payment to redo the crimson décor and replace it with purple and gold. Now they steer that RV (they did the makeover themselves) wherever the Tigers and their boy are playing ball, making the drive from the Orlando suburbs to all points Southeastern. During LSU home games they work with their son to host families who have children with special needs, something the family hopes to continue to do as Dylan moves up the baseball ladder.
“He’s such a great baseball player, but then he’s also like the nicest, kindest guy, it almost makes you mad,” Floyd joked. “But it’s also a genuine privilege to know him and to watch him play. It’s next-level stuff and it’s awesome to see everyone else kind of discover the guy we already know.”
Those discoverers include the LSU icons who came before him. One by one, they have reached out, unofficially welcoming him into their club. Crews rolls off their names, the ones he wants to be listed among when he departs for the big leagues in July: Odell Beckham Jr., Shaquille O’Neal and the baseball player he talked to three years ago, when he was wrestling with whether or not to enter the MLB draft out of high school, Alex Bregman. You know, the dudes of their time.
“The reason I came here is to win a national championship, to put a new year up on that Intimidator,” he said of the legendarily gargantuan scoreboard that towers over the left field of the Box.
Then he went out and did just that.
And that’s what makes Dylan Crews The Dude.
-
Mark Schlabach
OXFORD, Miss. — Before sunrise on Tuesday morning, barely a day after Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin set the college football world ablaze with reports that members of his family had visited Florida and LSU, he went to the one place he figured might cool things down — social media.
In a post on his X account, Kiffin encouraged everyone to “have the best Tuesday ever” and included a photo of a page from Brianna Wiest’s self-development book, “The Pivot Year: 365 Days to Become the Person You Truly Want to Be.”
“How do you know what to do next?” the passage said. “You ask yourself, honestly, what your 90-year-old self would advise you to do. What they would have wished you had done. You ask yourself, honestly, what you’ve sensed from the beginning. What you have ignored, what you have quieted and distracted yourself from.”
Wiest encouraged readers to make two lists, one of the positives and one of the negatives, and weigh them.
“And if there is one thing on the left that overpowers the dozen things on the right, then you trust that,” Wiest wrote. “You ask yourself what path will make you more of the person you are meant to be.”
That is the dilemma 50-year-old Kiffin is facing. He has two potential paths.
Stay at the university in the small Southern town with the small stadium (64,038) and small (but growing) trophy case that gave him a second chance in big-time college football when most others wouldn’t.
Or take a job at a bigger university with a bigger stadium in a bigger city that might provide him with a better opportunity to win an SEC title and national championship.
Who is Kiffin meant to be? The coach who has restored his once-sullied public image and seems genuinely happy living in the same small town as two of his children and his ex-wife? Or the coach whose ego won’t let him pass up an opportunity to coach in a stadium with more than 100,000 seats under the brightest lights and on the biggest stage, while potentially leaving another scorned fan base cursing his name after another ugly exit?
“With Lane, nothing is ever off the table, as you probably know,” a source familiar with the situation told ESPN on Tuesday. “I think that LSU is a real threat. There was so much smoke around Florida, but LSU is the one that really scares you.”
Not long ago, Kiffin was a coach with a checkered past who many athletic directors believed wasn’t worth the risk. Now, he’s the hottest commodity in this season’s coaching carousel after leading the Rebels to a 10-1 record and the No. 6 spot in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s latest rankings.
With one regular-season game left, against rival Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl in Starkville on Nov. 28 (noon ET, ABC), the Rebels are in line to make their first CFP appearance and possibly host a first-round game at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Dec. 19 or 20.
“I’m going to say what I’ve done for six years, which is not talk about other jobs and that situation,” Kiffin said during Wednesday’s SEC teleconference. “I love it here and it’s been amazing. And we’re in the season that’s the greatest run in the history of Ole Miss at this point — never been at this point. So I think it’s really exciting, and so I’m just living in the moment that amazing.”
Kiffin has done it with a new quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss, who spent last season at Division II Ferris State in Michigan, and a transfer running back, Kewan Lacy, who leads the FBS with 19 rushing touchdowns. The Rebels are No. 2 in the SEC in total offense (493.8 yards) and passing yards (305.1) and third in scoring (37.2 points).
Indeed, these are heady times for a program that has won only one national championship, in 1960, in the 120-year history of the program. Ole Miss hasn’t captured an SEC title since legendary coach Johnny Vaught guided the team to a 7-1-2 record in 1963, and it hasn’t even played in the SEC championship game since its inception in 1992.
In an interview with “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN on Tuesday, Kiffin said he reminds his players that these are the best of times and to enjoy them.
“Hey, those good old days, you’re in them right now,” Kiffin said. “Someday, 10, 20 years from now, you’re going to be saying, ‘Man, remember that run we had at Ole Miss, and we had that Division II quarterback that would make all those plays, and the running back was leading the country in touchdowns, and there was a dog running around on the field and the players were dunking?’
“I said, ‘You’re in the good old days right now, so just have fun, enjoy it,’ and I think if you watch our team, you see them doing that.”
Will the good times last in Oxford, though?
On Sunday, Kiffin’s ex-wife, Layla; his son, Knox; and his brother Chris’ son visited Gainesville, Florida. Layla and other family members visited the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the next day.
On McAfee’s show Tuesday, Kiffin denied that Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter issued an ultimatum for him to decide about his future.
“Yeah, that’s absolutely not true,” Kiffin said. “There’s been no ultimatum, anything like that at all. And so, I don’t know where that came from, like a lot of stuff that comes out there. Like I said, man, we’re having a blast. I love it here.”
0:44
Paul Finebaum: Lane Kiffin not stopping the Florida speculation
Paul Finebaum offers his take on whether Lane Kiffin wants to leave Ole Miss for Florida.
However, sources told ESPN that Carter is pressing Kiffin for clarity about his future by this coming weekend. Is Kiffin staying at Ole Miss or leaving for Florida or LSU?
Kiffin and Carter declined interviews for this story. An Ole Miss spokesperson told ESPN that Carter prefers for both men to focus on beating Mississippi State, which would secure the Rebels the second 11-win season in school history.
When Kiffin was asked Wednesday whether he was aware of any way he wouldn’t coach in next week’s Egg Bowl, he said, “Of course, I’m coaching. I mean, unless you guys know something [that] I don’t. Or I’m getting fired and I don’t know it.”
It’s unclear whether Carter will allow Kiffin to coach the Rebels in a potential CFP game if he decides to leave after the season. Former New York Giants head coach Joe Judge is in his first season as the Rebels’ quarterbacks coach and might be in position to serve as interim coach if Kiffin leaves.
Attorney Thomas Mars, whose clients have included many college coaches and athletic directors, reviewed Kiffin’s contract and found that, under its terms, “Ole Miss can ‘change or reassign [his] duties’ under certain circumstances, which include him ‘seeking or considering’ employment with another school without giving ‘prior written notice’ to the athletics director.”
If Kiffin or his representatives provided Ole Miss with prior written notice that he was talking to Florida and/or LSU, Mars didn’t see anything in the language of the contract that would legally prevent him from coaching in the CFP.
Kiffin’s list of positives for remaining at Ole Miss might be a lengthy one. After spending much of the early part of his career on the West Coast, as an assistant and head coach at USC and head coach of the Oakland Raiders, he has found an unlikely home in Oxford.
The slower pace has been good for him. He no longer drinks alcohol, doesn’t eat red meat or bread, and does hot yoga every morning at 6. In September, Kiffin told ESPN that he spends many Saturday nights eating pizza and watching college football games with his son, who is a sophomore quarterback at Oxford High School, and his friends.
“That’s what you do when you don’t drink,” Kiffin said.
His daughter Landry is a junior at Ole Miss. His younger daughter, Presley, is a freshman at USC and member of the Trojans’ volleyball team.
When Kiffin was asked Wednesday whether he’d be more hesitant to make a job change now that his kids are older, he said, “I do think that people with time change. And maybe when they’re younger, you make really fast decisions, which I’ve gone on record and said that before, in life [and] in situations. And I think as you get older and more mature and look at things differently, maybe you take longer to make the proper decision.”
Kiffin’s off-field behavior raised concerns for administrators during his previous coaching stops at Tennessee and Alabama, where he was an assistant coach under Nick Saban from 2014 to 2016.
He says he has found self-discipline at Ole Miss. He told ESPN that he even leaves his cellphone in his car most mornings.
“I just keep trying to come up with things to challenge discipline,” Kiffin said. “It started in training camp. I told my assistants, ‘You guys are just as bad as these kids. All you guys are addicted to your phones. I’m going to show you.'”
Kiffin might check his cellphone at lunch to make sure there’s not a family emergency or problem involving a player, but otherwise he doesn’t use it again until about 9 p.m.
“It’s awesome,” Kiffin said. “It’s amazing how much more productive you are. Like, until you do it, you don’t realize how much time you waste. And I’m not even a bad phone guy, as some people are.”
On the field, Kiffin has built arguably the best SEC program outside of Alabama and Georgia, at least in terms of victories the past six seasons. The Rebels are 54-19 in his six seasons — only the Crimson Tide (66-12) and Bulldogs (70-8) have more wins in the SEC since the start of the 2020 season. In fact, the Rebels have the eighth-most wins among power-conference teams during that stretch.
If Kiffin were comparing the Rebels to Florida and LSU six years ago, it might have been an easy decision to leave. However, that might not be the case anymore.
Since the start of the 2020 season, the Gators are 36-37. With a 3-7 record so far this season, they will have their fourth losing campaign in the past six years. Urban Meyer led the Gators to national championships in 2006 and 2008, but they’ve cycled through four coaches since he left after the 2010 season. Florida fired Billy Napier on Oct. 19 after his teams went 22-23 in four seasons.
Layla Kiffin, who moved to Oxford earlier this year to be close to two of their three children, is familiar with Gainesville. Her father, John Reaves, was a star quarterback for the Gators from 1969 to 1971. He left as the NCAA’s leading career passer with 7,581 yards and an SEC-record 54 touchdowns. After playing 11 seasons in the NFL, Reaves was an assistant under Steve Spurrier from 1990 to 1994.
LSU has been better than Florida since the start of the 2020 season, with a 46-27 record. The Tigers have lost at least three games in each of the past six seasons after quarterback Joe Burrow led them to a 15-0 record and a national championship in 2019.
Tigers coach Ed Orgeron was fired less than two years later. His replacement, former Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, was fired Oct. 26 after his teams compiled a 34-14 record in three-plus seasons.
There’s also the current political climate to consider at LSU. Days after Kelly was fired, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry criticized then-LSU athletic director Scott Woodward for agreeing to a 10-year, $95 million contract with Kelly that left LSU on the hook for a $54 million buyout. Woodward stepped down under pressure Oct. 30 and was replaced by longtime LSU athletics administrator Verge Ausberry.
On Nov. 10, Kelly’s attorneys sued LSU’s board of supervisors after the university purportedly notified Kelly that it was seeking to fire him “for cause” to avoid paying his full buyout.
“Crazy doesn’t scare Lane,” a source told ESPN. “That’s probably not going to scare him away.”
A former SEC coach, who hadn’t spoken to Kiffin about the situation, believed Florida and LSU were still better jobs than Ole Miss because of, among other factors, the other schools’ recruiting bases. Kiffin has relied heavily on the transfer portal in building his rosters in the past few seasons; the Rebels brought in 29 transfers this past season.
“It’s really hard to turn over your roster like that every year,” the coach said. “You must be almost perfect in your defensive evaluations, and that’s hard to do. You can’t keep doing it.”
At the very least, though, Ole Miss officials hope the on-field struggles at their SEC rivals will give them a chance to keep Kiffin beyond this season.
“I think he’s going, ‘Well, maybe I can be a national contender here, and they give me everything I want. They let me be me,'” a source familiar with the situation said. “I know that’s easy to say, but, you know, Lane’s not an easy guy. I think we’ve learned how to deal with him and how to manage him and let him be him, and I think he appreciates that. So, yeah, I don’t think we’re out of it by any means.”
If Kiffin leaves Ole Miss, it wouldn’t be the first messy departure in his coaching career. When he abruptly left Tennessee after only 14 months to return to USC as Pete Carroll’s replacement in January 2010, hundreds of students protested outside the football complex, burning a mattress and T-shirts bearing his name.
Kiffin lasted three-plus seasons with the Trojans and was infamously fired in the early-morning hours by athletic director Pat Haden at a private terminal at LAX after an ugly 62-41 loss at Arizona State in the fifth game of the 2013 season.
Then, after Kiffin spent three seasons rebuilding his career as Alabama’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Saban relieved him of his duties on Jan. 2, 2017, a week before the Crimson Tide were to play Clemson in the CFP National Championship. Steve Sarkisian called the plays in Alabama’s 35-31 loss, and Kiffin left to become the head coach at Florida Atlantic, which had hired him three weeks earlier.
How will things turn out in Oxford? No one knows — at least not yet.
“If there’s one thing about Lane,” a source told ESPN, “it’s that you never know what he’s going to do until he does it.”
-
Dan Wetzel
Lane Kiffin will always regret it if he quits on his Ole Miss team.
He’ll always have remorse if he decides to go take another job — Florida or LSU — right on the verge of leading a likely 11-1 Rebels team into the College Football Playoff. He’ll never live down the fact he turned his back on a locker room ready to fight with him for a national title — all for the perceived greener grass of Gainesville or Baton Rouge.
What kind of coach would do that?
This has nothing to do with what job offers more advantages or money or proximity to talent. It has nothing to do with the long term.
Timing is everything in life. Sometimes for the positive, sometimes not. That’s how it works. Adults deal with it.
Kiffin may be free to walk from the Rebels, but everyone else is free to judge him if he does.
If he does, that judgment won’t be positive.
Kiffin, 50, knows drama and setbacks. USC fired him at an airport. Nick Saban bounced him as an Alabama assistant just days before a national title game, convinced he was too focused on his next job as the coach at Florida Atlantic. Al Davis dumped him from the Oakland Raiders and declared he had been “conned” into hiring him in the first place.
Kiffin also knows he has rebuilt his reputation, especially of late in Oxford. A better coach. A better father. A better person. When not discussing football, he talks about how balanced, sober and happy his life has become.
“The whole good old days … I’m in them right now,” Kiffin said Saturday after defeating, coincidentally, Florida. “I just think people don’t realize when they’re in them. And then they get older and they say, ‘Remember that it was great back then?’ You know, I’m just fortunate to be in them.”
Ole Miss is 10-1 heading into next week’s season finale against Mississippi State. The Rebels are primed to host a first-round playoff game, which would arguably be the biggest sporting event in the history of the state. That alone is a seminal moment for a school that has granted its coach every wish it could.
His success has made him a coveted coaching candidate, with two big-time programs seemingly willing to do anything to get him — including ignoring the fact that they are hiring a guy who would walk out on the eve of the postseason.
In a perfect world, this decision would take place after the Ole Miss season. That isn’t how the calendar works, though. UF and LSU need a coach. Returning talent needs to be convinced to stay. Recruits need to be identified.
The high school signing period begins on Dec. 3. The transfer portal opens on Jan. 2.
Ole Miss’ first-round playoff game would occur on Dec. 19 or 20. Win, as Ole Miss would be favored to do, and the quarterfinals are on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
For Kiffin, it’s either stay or go. There is no time to do both. Pledge your allegiance to Ole Miss or walk out and start anew. The former might cost him an opportunity that he always wanted. The latter, however, would define him.
The coach who quit on a playoff team? It’s unthinkable.
Kiffin isn’t saying much, other than general comments about how happy he is at Ole Miss.
“We’re having a blast,” Kiffin said Tuesday on “The Pat McAfee Show.” Adding, “I love it here.”
That said, members of Kiffin’s family — including ex-wife Layla and son Knox, a high school sophomore — visited Gainesville and Baton Rouge in recent days, ESPN and others reported. Kiffin says Ole Miss hasn’t given him an ultimatum timeline, but there is no time like the present to make a decision.
Kiffin should stay and see the season out; attempt to win, try to reach the Final Four or beyond, make the memories, and forge the deep bonds that coaching is supposed to be about.
This has nothing to do with the quality of the opportunity at LSU or Florida. Both schools offer immense resources, commitment and potential. Both sit in talent-rich states. Both have advantages that Ole Miss can’t match, although here in the NIL/portal/revenue share era, the gap has closed.
In different circumstances, he could go; maybe he even should go.
Not in these circumstances, though. Not at this time. Not with a team this good, at a school this supportive, in a season this magical.
Certainly not without causing everyone to wonder if Al Davis was right all along.
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024