Is this some wise acre’s idea of a practical joke or maybe just a headline writer’s typo?

It doesn’t make any sense, I can tell you that.

But if I’m reading this right, it says something about baseball, the college game, and something else about Omaha coming to Baton Rouge and LSU for a three-game weekend series.

Huh?

All those words kind of go together, roll off the tongue naturally. But no, no, no. That’s not the way it works.

Something must have gotten garbled in the translation.

For one thing, it’s way too early, still February by most accounts.

But tell me this whole world hasn’t gone off the rails, all mixed-up, flippity-flop backwards and bonkers.

Omaha is coming to LSU?

You better double-check that itinerary.

The way LSU’s master plan is set up for baseball, it’s the Tigers who go to Omaha. There, to be welcomed with open arms by the locals who have adopted the team but mostly love the nutty fan base and truly adore the cast-iron pots and good cooking they traipse in with.

It’s been going on for near-about 40 years or so. After all, that’s where the College World Series is held.

But not in February.

No, LSU’s relationship with Omaha is a tried-and-true June ritual, marked on many Louisiana calendars.

And what is this Omaha anyway?

Professional-type duty has called me and the trusty expense account to Omaha more times than I can count. Love the place and the people and especially the Old Market area where you can sample the chicken-fried bacon at the Twisted Fork and I highly recommend the whiskey steak out at The Drover.

That’s just a quick smidgen of my Omaha bona fides, OK? Been there, done that. But I had never heard of any Omaha baseball team.

When did this happen?

There’s a Creighton University up there with a small ballpark LSU has often practiced in.

OK, so I did a little digging.

It’s actually the University of Nebraska Omaha (no hyphen, apparently), which the natives pretty much refer to as UNO.

That place, I was vaguely familiar with. It’s out there on Dodge Street, not all that far from Barrett’s Barleycorn, the LSU hangout.

And it’s still the name of the school per se. But in some sort of marketing ploy, for purposes of athletics the school’s teams now simply go by, and are branded as, “Omaha.”

No harm done.

The baseball team also answers to “Mavericks,” their mascot.

Even with proper i.d., there’s not a lot of baseball history associated with the Mavericks — my casual conversations, however, would suggest the Tigers probably don’t want to mess with the school’s renowned hockey varsity.

It would appear that Omaha — the baseball team, not the city — is reverse imitating LSU in another way.

Much the way the Tigers like to extend their stay as long as possible in Omaha, the Mavericks are all but homesteading on the Bayou.

They were in New Orleans last weekend, where they were swept in three games by Tulane despite scoring a fair amount or runs.

Omaha recovered with a side trip to Thibodaux and beat Nicholls State 5-2.

The Mavericks had probably been promised a good thawing-out with the trip South— and the forecast doesn’t look like that will happen this weekend in Alex Box Stadium.

LSU probably owes anything  Omaha-related some reciprocal hospitality.

But the real question for LSU  is how this Omaha can help the Tigers get to the Omaha.

Probably not a whole lot.

No offense, but it’s a baseball program sharing a city with the mecca of college baseball, Charles Schwab Field, and yet until recently bounced around various high school parks for its home games.

The Mavericks have new, on-campus digs now and, in fact, the Tigers practiced there during their 2023 CWS championship run.

That’s probably the extent of LSU baseball’s knowledge about that Omaha.

Last week the Tigers opened the season with Purdue Fort Wayne.

You would think LSU and head coach Jay Johnson would try to upgrade this pre-conference schedule to where you don’t need a Google search every weekend.

He didn’t start it. The unknowns and the unthawed were February-March staples under former coach Paul Mainieri too.

But it doesn’t do LSU much good in preparing for the rigors of the Southeastern Conference.