By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
The only two present college baseball coaches with two national championships meet Friday night in Nashville as No. 13 LSU (13-5) plays at unranked Vanderbilt (11-7) at Hawkins Field (6 p.m., SEC Network+).
Jay Johnson, 48 and in his fifth year with the Tigers, won the national championship for LSU last year and in 2023. He also finished runner-up as Arizona’s head coach in 2016.
Tim Corbin, 64 and in his 24th year at Vanderbilt, won national titles in 2014 and ’19 with runner-up finishes in 2015 and 2021.
LSU’s Chris Stanfield basically went all John Fogerty and told Jay Johnson, “Put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today.”https://t.co/JZSyxcP5ID
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) March 12, 2026
Johnson is the highest paid college baseball coach in the country at $3.05 million. Corbin, whom then-LSU athletic director Skip Bertman interviewed to be LSU’s head coach after the 2006 season, makes $2.45 million.
Each come from small towns – Johnson from Oroville, California, and Corbin from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. They played college baseball at small schools – Johnson at Shasta College in Redding, California, and Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego and Corbin at Ohio Wesleyan. They began their coaching careers off the beaten path – Johnson at Point Loma Nazarene and Corbin at Presbyterian in Clinton, South Carolina.
But they are the elite of the elite in college baseball with nine trips to Omaha, Nebraska, for the College World Series between them with Johnson going for the first of four times in 2016 and Corbin going five times between 2011 and 2021. And they have four national championships between them since 2014.
Corbin has not returned to Omaha since losing the national championship series to Mississippi State in 2021, but Johnson still views him as state of the art.
“The amount of success over a long period of time is pretty remarkable,” Johnson said Thursday before leaving for Nashville with his team. “Like, he’s the best coach since Skip (Bertman) in college baseball, in my opinion.”
And Bertman, who won five national championships at LSU from 1991-2000, has long been an idol of Johnson. When Bertman as LSU athletic director was looking for a new coach after he let go of Smoke Laval following the 2006 season, he interviewed Corbin, who had dramatically turned around a terrible Vanderbilt program. The Commodores had 22 straight losing seasons in the SEC under previous coach Ray Mewbourne.
In just his second season, Corbin set the school record for wins in a 45-19 season and 16-14 in the SEC and reached the Super Regional round in 2004 and got back to another NCAA Regional in 2006. Bertman wanted a larger personality and more of a salesman and hired Notre Dame’s Paul Mainieri, who reached Omaha in his second season at LSU and won a national championship in his third. He also went on to match Corbin in SEC regular season titles with four and CWS appearances with five with a national runner-up finish in 2017. He retired from LSU after the 2021 season with a serious back and neck condition. After getting healthier, he took over at South Carolina last year.
Corbin has reached five Super Regionals in all before elimination and has reached the NCAA postseason in 20 of 22 seasons (excluding the COVID year of 2020).
“What I admire is their attention to detail when you just watch them work on the field – the commitment to fundamentals,” Johnson said. “They’ve obviously recruited at a high level for two plus decades. There’s a ton of respect there.”
Head-to-head, Johnson leads Corbin, 4-3. In Johnson’s first season at LSU in 2022, he swept the series at Vanderbilt, 13-2, 8-3 and 21-10. Corbin took two of three at LSU in 2024, 8-6 and 13-3 after a 10-6 loss. In Johnson’s last year at Arizona in 2021, he lost to Vanderbilt, 7-6, in 12 innings in Omaha as the Commodores went on to reach the championship series.
“We were there talking for a second before the game,” Johnson said. “And none of this (Johnson knowing for sure he would be the LSU coach) was on the radar. I had actually talked about maybe getting together with him and just talkin’ baseball.”
They could have much to discuss.
“I like their team,” Corbin said in a radio interview on JB & Friends in Nashville on Friday. “Jay Johnson’s a very good coach. He’s done this for a long period of time. He was an outstanding recruiter at San Diego (as an assistant coach from 2006-13). He took Arizona to the College World Series. Jay knows how to win. He knows how to put together good rosters. He’s good at what he does. This is going to be an unbelievable challenge.”
LSU and Vanderbilt play again Saturday (7 p.m., SEC Network) or on Sunday (3 p.m., ESPN2).
Johnson’s pitching rotation for the weekend will have sophomore Casan Evans (1-0, 4.66 ERA, 30 strikeouts, 19.1 innings) on Friday, junior transfer Cooper Moore (3-1, 2.25 ERA, 31 strikeouts, 24 innings) Saturday and sophomore William Schmidt (3-1, 2.45 ERA, 33 strikeouts, 22 innings) Sunday.
Corbin will start junior Connor Fennell (2-0, 3.80 ERA, 30 strikeouts, 21.1 innings) on Friday, freshman Wyatt Nadeau (0-0, 0.00 ERA, 15 strikeouts, 11 innings) on Saturday and sophomore Nate Taylor (0-3, 4.91 ERA, 24 strikeouts in 18.1 innings) on Sunday.
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