The 2002 comedy film Van Wilder follows a seventh-year senior by the same name who seemingly expresses no interest in ever graduating from college. The film itself is crude and stupid and it’s likely aged horribly, which is exactly what you’d expect from an early 2000’s comedy with a plot such as this one. And the only reason it’s worth bringing up right here is because the life of LSU Tigers running back John Emery Jr. could soon be optioned as a spiritual sequel. Hollywood, take a listen.
John Emery Jr., who arrived in Baton Rouge in 2019 as the 2nd-ranked running back in his high school class, will now officially be returning to LSU for a seventh season, according to Dan Morrison of On3 Sports.
Unlike Van Wilder, there are legitimate reasons why Emery’s stay at the university has been prolonged. After a promising opening two seasons in which he rushed for 566 yards and 7 touchdowns on 114 carries, Emery was forced to miss the entire 2021 season due to academic reasons. He returned to the field in 2022, but saw his 2023 and 2024 seasons cut short due to a pair of ACL tears. This brief rundown doesn’t even take into consideration that Emery missed his entire junior season of high school due to an injury, yet remained the 12th-ranked overall player in the 2019 recruiting class.
A Louisiana native, Emery has opted to continue his collegiate career, and continue to rehab from one serious injury after another, with the LSU Tigers year after year, which proves his affinity for his hometown program. Why else wouldn’t he have decided to leave Baton Rouge for a greater opportunity to shine at any point in the last four or five years, or when Ed Orgeron departed and Brian Kelly entered the picture?
Hopefully Emery’s seventh season in the Bayou is his most successful yet, and hopefully his story is eventually immortalized by a film that is much more warmly regarded by movie critics than Van Wilder was.
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