The Bengal Tiger Staff
Shea Dixon – Publisher
Since his arrival in Baton Rouge in 2004, Shea has spent the past two decades covering the LSU beat with a primary focus on football and recruiting.
Shea has covered multiple National Championship games, including LSU’s title wins in 2007 and 2019. He began his sports writing career as a high school student at the Hattiesburg American, where he had a Sunday column on youth sports. He went on to attend LSU, graduating with a journalism degree in 2009. While working as student, Shea helped spearhead the first weekly recruiting updates at The Daily Reveille, LSU’s student newspaper. He also moved into a full-time role on the Scout network before leaving college, which helped kickstart his road to recruiting and team coverage of the Tigers.
Shea spent a decade at 247Sports as an LSU recruiting analyst and team reporter before moving to On3 in September 2022, where he took over as Publisher of The Bengal Tiger – the On3’s networks LSU fan site. LSU fans can follow Shea’s work on The Bengal Tiger and On3 with his daily recruiting updates, multiple podcasts each week and more.
Billy Embody – Publisher
With a decade of experience in recruiting and team coverage, Billy arrived in Baton Rouge to cover LSU beginning in 2016 with Scout. After merging with 247Sports in 2017, Billy spent the next five seasons with Geaux247, including covering the 2019 National Championship team. He’s covered LSU for On3 since January 2022.
Billy brings experience covering basketball, baseball, football and recruiting for Tiger fans, which he now brings daily to On3 and The Bengal Tiger. Billy is also the Publisher of On3’s SMU fan page OnThePonyExpress.com.
For Tiger fans unfamiliar with his work, Billy has covered three head coaches spanning from Les Miles to Ed Orgeron to Brian Kelly, he was on the LSU basketball beat across multiple basketball coaches, Joe Burrow & Co.’s run to a National Championship and the historic 2020 NFL Draft. During that time, there were plenty of recruiting storylines to cover as well, going coast to coast to do so.
Billy married the former Michelle Pitoniak in May 2022. Billy attended SMU in Dallas, graduating with journalism and sport management degrees. He walked on SMU’s football team and spent time in the recruiting department. From 2015-2020, he worked in football operations for the Washington Redskins, advancing road games.
Matthew Brune – Staff writer
Entering year three of covering the LSU beat, Matthew got to Baton Rouge in July of 2021 after working for 247Sports during college and one year in Louisiana, which spanned 2018 to 2022. He then made the move to On3 and The Bengal Tiger in September of 2022.
His years in college were spent at the University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas, majoring in Journalism and working for the school newspaper before going on to cover the Mean Green at 247Sports. He also freelanced for the Denton Record-Chronicle and Dallas Morning News newspapers in his time in Dallas-Fort Worth. He graduated in December of 2019.
In addition to his work for On3 and The Bengal Tiger, Matthew has two podcasts with Dave Campbell. One podcast covers North Texas, while the other covers college basketball in the state of Texas. In his free time, Matthew plays basketball and tennis.