McKnight's USC move leaves storm behind in Bayou

RIVER RIDGE, La. -- There is no worse way to insult an LSU fan. Recruit one of its own. Wine him, dine him, then fly him halfway across the country and put him in a strange uniform.

And by strange, we mean anything but purple and gold.

To LSU fans, Joe McKnight is a traitor. (US Presswire)

"I got death threats," former Shreveport (La.) Evangel Christian High School coach Dennis Dunn said. "I got calls at my home. I went on statewide radio and said, 'I'm a huge LSU fan, but I'm not telling these kids where to go.'"

Dunn's sin? "Allowing" Brock Berlin to sign with Florida.

Brock Berlin?

You can understand why, then, Joe McKnight is more than a traitor to those crazed LSU loyalists. Why John Curtis, McKnight's coach, was told he was "the most hated guy in the LSU community."

You can understand -- must understand -- because McKnight will never be Brock Berlin. Thank goodness. McKnight has more talent, more character, more of a future; the nation's best high school running back out of John Curtis Christian High School here in Jefferson Parish near New Orleans; the supposed next LSU Great One who endured all the wining, the dining and finally ended up signing ... with USC in February.

When McKnight went West, the reaction was swift and cruel.

My kids think you suck because you didn't go to LSU one e-mailer wrote.

You don't have any state pride, one critic said.

You'll sit on the bench for three years, said another.

Drunk on their own sense of entitlement, maybe LSU fans didn't know there is a long list of high school running backs who have left New Orleans. Marshall Faulk ended up at San Diego State. From Curtis High alone, Jonathan Wells (Ohio State), Chris Howard (Michigan) and Reggie Dupard (SMU) went elsewhere.

Or maybe that's the point. The fans were aware of the exodus.