The University of Georgia may have fallen short of winning a national football championship by losing to Alabama in overtime, but the Bulldogs won the recruiting war for 2018 by signing a majority of the nation’s top high school talent.

National Signing Day seems to be all about the four- and five-star players announcing their college choice. But, in many locales, it is so much more than that. In St. Charles Parish, students from Destrehan and Hahnville announced their future destinations but also showed a level of maturity and awareness for which they do not get enough credit.

Two of the Catholic League’s premier guards, Elijah Morgan of Jesuit and St. Augustine’s Damon Landry (4), collide while vying for the basketball during a key District 9-5A game played Feb. 8 at Jesuit. Although Morgan scored a game-high 25 points, Landry’s 15 points contributed greatly to the Purple Knights’ 49-42 victory. With two games remaining in the season, Holy Cross has a 9-2 district, record and St. Augustine is 8-2 and still in contention for a share of the district title.

The pass over the middle was a blue dart, caught by the wide receiver as the rest of the LSU Tigers cheered. The video of Gov. John Bel Edwards tossing footballs at a practice was pretty impressive.

When you compare the power rankings of Louisiana’s select and non-select boys’ basketball teams, it makes you wonder what all the fuss was about having one common playoff for a true state championship.

The wall of resistance that stands between public school principals and common sense is more solid than the wall of Jericho. It’s quite obvious that this wall is unscalable, as reiterated at the Jan. 24-26 Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s convention in Baton Rouge.

When it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. That is what principals in the Louisiana High School Athletic Association said about their basketball playoffs. By a vote of 205-120, the principals voted down a proposal that would have united public and private schools in the same brackets.

While you are reading this, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s 2018 annual meeting will be or will have been taking place in Baton Rouge. There are no more items calling for additional separate playoffs for public and non-public schools as occurred in 2013 when the LHSAA voted to have nine football championships instead of five, or in 2016 with subsequent splits in basketball, baseball and softball.

Ursuline Academy’s basketball team might be known as “the bad luck Lions,” but you’d never know it by watching Coach Andrea Williams girls in navy and white perform. As they enter District 10-3A play, the Lions have won 15 of 18 non-district games, the latest against 14-6 Ellender, 59-40, in the “Den” on Jan. 11.

It was early in 2000. At Muss Bertolino Stadium, a local television reporter and his photographer were doing stories on some of the draft prospects working out with trainer Tom Shaw. While we were taking pictures of some of the prospects, the father of an obscure quarterback came up to the reporter and introduced himself.

There are 60 pages of agenda items for the LHSAA’s Jan. 26 business meeting. In those pages, printed in black and red ink, participating principals have introduced or offered 55 amendments to the athletic body’s rules book. Mindful that it now takes a vote of two-thirds of the state’s 400-plus member principals to pass a new proposal, the outcome of this meeting will either help the association move forward in a positive manner or keep the LHSAA loping on its usual treadmill to nowhere.

When you are the interim head coach who is promoted, you are fighting a perception problem. For the last 21 games, LSU’s Ed Orgeron has fought that battle. As so it is for new offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger.

This season, the Saints have discovered a consistent winning formula. Now, they play a team who knows that formula, too, and does it a little better.

Mike Krajcer, the head basketball coach at John Curtis School, raised the eyebrows of his District 9-5A coaching peers and beyond on Jan. 6 after his team lost a league game to Archbishop Rummel, 73-71.