LSU sat out a 15-0 vote while the rest of the Southeastern Conference slammed the door on former NFL players, and I am not buying the principled-stand routine for one second. Presidents and chancellors codified the penalties on Wednesday: half a season for the head coach, half of that sport’s annual operating budget as a fine, full loss of coaching and recruiting duties during the suspension. Greg Sankey has latitude for more. The Big Ten moved the same day. The Big 12 lined up. Notre Dame followed. LSU abstained.
I have watched this league long enough to know what an abstention looks like when a school has already loaded the shopping cart. LSU has been the hotbed. Former Ole Miss tight end Dae’Quan Wright out of Browns camp. Defensive lineman Zxavian Harris off the Saints. The Tigers were chasing the pipeline while everyone else was measuring the blast radius. You do not abstain from a rule you never planned to need.
Lane Kiffin Talked Both Ways in 48 Hours
Let me tell you something about Lane Kiffin. On Monday he said the quiet part with a straight face: because of the rulings, those players were going to play for you or for somebody else, so LSU would recruit them. By Tuesday on Pat McAfee he was performing the balancing act. “There’s a lot of parts of this I don’t like. I don’t think professionals should come back to college sports and college football. But in this instance, these are not players who have gone on to play seasons professionally or randomly filed an injunction. This is part of a specific class that was ruled wrong by the NCAA that was supposed to be 5-for-5.”
I hear the distinction. I also hear a coach who wants the talent and the moral cover at the same time. He went further on the court-order problem: “I think you get into a really interesting situation as a conference if you’re now saying, ‘Well, we’re not going to follow this court order.’ These kids that a court says can go anywhere, we’re going to say, ‘No you can’t.’” That is a real legal tension. Attorney Ryan Downton, representing plaintiffs in the Louisiana case, called the conference moves cartel-like and said they put the NCAA in contempt of multiple court orders. Players’ lawyers will keep swinging.
None of that changes the product question. The SEC presidents and chancellors put it cleanly a day earlier: “College athletes, not former professional athletes, have been at the heart of the Southeastern Conference. Individuals who choose to leave college athletics, sign professional playing contracts, and compete professionally should not then be permitted to return to college competition. Allowing that to occur will blur the line between college and professional sports, create significant competitive equity concerns, and reduce opportunities for high school and current college athletes. College sports are for college athletes.”
I said versions of this when the first Class of 2022 injunctions started leaking back onto rosters. Nobody wanted the headache. Now the headache has a price tag attached to the head coach’s name.
Half the Budget Is Not a Slap. It Is a Sentence.
Fifty percent of a football program’s annual operating budget is not a parking ticket. A coach sitting half the season, barred from recruiting and administration, is not a wrist slap. Those penalties were modeled on the ghost-transfer hammer for a reason. You want to run a former pro who signed, got cut, and found a Louisiana courtroom? You are betting your season and a catastrophic share of the athletic department’s money that Sankey will look the other way. He will not.
I have zero patience for the romance of the NFL do-over. You declared. You signed. You took the check, or you took the roster spot, or you took the shot. The high school kid waiting on a scholarship and the current roster player grinding for snaps do not owe you a fifth act because a camp cut stung. Competitive equity is not a slogan when one school in Baton Rouge is collecting releases while the rest of the conference is trying to keep the sport from turning into a scrap heap for professional cuts.
LSU’s abstention tells on itself. A 16-0 policy vote the day before. A 15-0 penalties vote with one empty chair. That chair belonged to the school with the most skin in the return market. Wade Rousse’s program wanted Wright and Harris and whoever else the injunction machine spit out. The league said no in public. LSU said nothing with a vote, which is its own kind of answer.
The Pipeline Closes Whether the Lawyers Like It or Not
Will there be lawsuits? Of course. Will someone argue the conferences just dared a judge? Absolutely. Kiffin is not wrong that court orders have rewritten eligibility before, from sixth-year cases on down. The difference is scale and identity. One player’s injunction is a weather event. A conference-wide NFL-to-campus pipeline is climate change for the sport.
I am convicting the idea that college football exists as a soft landing for men who already cashed the professional ticket. Legacy is built on what you protect. The SEC protected the line between the league that pays and the league that still pretends the athlete is a student first. LSU protected its recruiting board. Those are not the same project.
The fine is half the budget. The suspension is half the season. The vote was fifteen to zero with one school staring at the floor. Formally, the door is shut. LSU can keep explaining the abstention. The rest of the conference already wrote the sentence.
