LSU receives a pre-season No. 5 ranking

BATON ROUGE -- The LSU Tigers will start the 2020 season ranked No. 5 in the country, according to the USA Today Pre-season Coaches Poll released Thursday afternoon.
The defending National Champions lost a number of key players off of last year’s squad, including Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow.
The Tigers are scheduled to begin the defense of their title on September 26 when they face Ole Miss. LSU will have an a conference only schedule of 10 games after the SEC decided on the abbreviated plan last week.
LSU began the 2019 season ranked No. 6 in both the coaches and AP top 25 en route to its championship title run.
Clemson, Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia round out the top five, with Clemson earning the No. 1 rank.
Oklahoma sits at No. 6, while Penn. St. and Florida come in as the No. 7 and No. 8 ranked teams respectfully. The final two teams in the top 10 are Oregon (No. 9) and Notre Dame (No. 10).
Six teams from the SEC were ranked in the top 15 of the poll. Other SEC schools making the list were Auburn (No. 11) and Texas A&M (No. 15).
In other LSU football news, former Tiger quarterback Peter Parrish announced his commitment to Memphis via Twitter Thursday morning.
Parrish, who entered the NCAA transfer portal on Monday was indefinitely suspended from the team in March for violation of team rules. Parrish, a freshman, did not see any playing time in 2019-20, was not with the team during offseason workouts in mid-January. He was officially taken off of the roster in July.