Joe Burrow, here’s some friendly advice from a veteran sportswriter who has seen this movie and its hundreds of sequels.

Don’t waste your breath on the Robert Manns of the world.

Let’s rewind.

On Sunday through social media, LSU football revealed a first look at its stunning $28 million renovation to its operations and performance nutrition center.

The extra 25,000 square feet includes a state-of-the-art cafeteria to feed all LSU athletes (not just football players), offices, a players’ lounge and a locker room in which each player has a sleeping pod.

It may be the most functional football locker room ever created, something that meshes cutting edge technology and the time demand players face daily.

Never mind that the renovations were privately funded from Tiger Athletic Foundation donations and from $1 million each from former LSU defensive backs Patrick Peterson and Tyrann Mathieu.

Such improvements should be viewed as an investment, not an expenditure.

There will always be naysayers who can’t stomach college sports, especially football, is a multi-million dollar business that increasingly overshadows the academic missions of universities.

This has been accepted as reality since 1984 when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates for TV money pouring into college sports. The justices ruled the NCAA held an illegal monopoly controlling college football TV rights.

After that, anyone with two headsets, a couple of cameras and a microwave dish had a shot at becoming a TV network.

Yet, there's still whiners like Robert Mann, an LSU Media & Public Affairs professor, who tweeted his reaction after viewing social media videos of the new football center renovations:

“Meanwhile, across campus, I vacuum my faculty office with a Dust Devil I bought at Walmart.”

Enter Joe Burrow.

The Tigers’ senior starting quarterback saw Mann’s wah-wah-wah tweet and fired back a response tweet that said, “Why, professor, do you feel entitled to the fruits of our labor?”

Who knew Joltin’ Joe could play such good defense?

Burrow deleted the tweet, but it lives thanks to somebody who snapped a screen shot of it. Maybe somebody in the LSU athletic department advised or ordered Burrow to take down the tweet, but he should never have to apologize.

Because for Mann and everyone who believes major college sports is a stain on the pristine halls of academia, they can just keep on fighting those windmills that are powered by the cash flow of big-time football programs like LSU.

The Tigers' football machine made a profit of $55 million in the 2017-18 academic year (the 2018-19 numbers haven't been released yet) and is backed by a solid donation system. So, it not only foots the bill for almost all the rest of men’s and women’s sports at LSU but it is also self-sustaining.

Unlike the majority of most college athletic programs in the United States, LSU’s athletic department never siphons money from the university’s general fund. In fact, the athletic department has given back almost $40 million in the last five years annually to the general fund, a national rarity these days.

There’s also the economic impact of LSU football.

A few years ago, longtime Baton Rouge economist Loren Scott estimated almost 14,000 jobs, ranging from hotel workers to restaurant servers to health professionals and to others, are created annually because of LSU sports.

That’s not to mention money spent by more than 100,000 fans tailgating outside Tiger Stadium at the majority of home games. Forbes Magazine estimates fans spent $8.5 million for each LSU home game.

“LSU is an engine and when the engine is running smoothly, the car goes faster,” Scott once said. “A lot of businesses in the state do better when LSU is playing at a high level. LSU sports are a very strong economic engine and without that engine, a lot of people would not be able to enjoy a lot of the business that comes along with it.”

Now, imagine if LSU didn’t have football.

The Robert Manns in this universe would certainly be happy.

But Baton Rouge and South Louisiana would be an economically poorer place to live with little energy, excitement or anticipation. The topics of conversation for most of the year would be hurricanes, humidity and which are bigger this year -- crawfish or mosquitos?

If Mann is so perturbed about his situation or that the university doesn’t have funding to fix its crumbling school library or other areas, don’t blame the athletic department.

Point the finger at the stubborn Louisiana legislature, who has had a cash cow called sports betting thrown in its lap and it won’t even consider legalizing it.

Here’s a coffer filler that could provide funding to raise the level of education throughout the state, and the legislature sits on its hands while next-door neighbor Mississippi makes a killing after legalizing it last summer.

To be fair to Mann, he wasn’t the only LSU figure critical of the Tigers’ football ops renovations.

Former LSU safety Eric Reid of the Carolina Panthers used the lavishness and price tag of the Tigers’ new digs to protest that the money should have been used to fund more scholarships.

Reid tweeted, “Dont u find it interesting that we can convince people 2 donate millions 2 renovate a facility that doesn’t need renovating? How many scholarships could have been given with the money used 2 renovate?

“There are folks who could use a scholarship more than our guys need a tv in their locker. Those who know me know the amount of love I have for LSU. This is too much though.”

Obviously, Reid never realized that the LSU athletic department has to pay the university for every scholarship it awards a student-athlete.

That bill stretches into millions and millions. There is no such thing as a truly free ride, but Reid may have not ever bothered to ask who was paying the freight for his LSU scholarship.

If Reid and Mann think LSU football renovations are too much, perhaps they should visit Clemson’s new $55 million football facility that opened in 2017.

It includes a second to first floor stainless steel playground slide that leads to the practice field, two bowling lanes, an outdoor basketball court, a putting green, a nine-hole miniature golf course, a wiffle ball diamond, a sand volleyball pit, a horseshoe pit, a fire pit, a barber shop, a shoe shine area and a nap room.

Hold on, there’s more.

Like a cafeteria with a biometric scanner that develops each player’s daily food intake based on their current weight, a plunge pool (including flat screen TVs) with a 60-person capacity for cooling off, a lap pool, four therapy tubs (with more flat screen TVs) and a 23,000-foot weight room.

So, do you think anybody in Clemson complained about the $55 mil price tag after the Tigers hammered Alabama 44-16 in last January’s national championship game?

Nah, didn’t think so.