I keep coming back to the same image: Lane Kiffin on a phone with a guy still listed on an NFL roster, selling him on a lawsuit in Baton Rouge so he can wear purple and gold in September. That is the story. Not the portal. Not the fifth-year debate. The head coach of LSU, with a roster already paid well over $40 million, cold-calling professional football to stock his depth chart through a Louisiana court.
CBS Sports reported it straight. Kiffin and the Tigers reached out to multiple players on NFL rosters or their representation specifically to get them to join a lawsuit against the NCAA. The venue in the 19th Judicial District was not an accident. When the temporary restraining order dropped covering more than 30 athletes and 16 football players from the Class of 2022, LSU was already in position. Dae’Quan Wright, Zxavian Harris, Junior Tuihalamaka. Two of them had just been wearing Kiffin’s colors at Ole Miss a year earlier. This was not scavenger hunting. This was reclaiming inventory.
He Built the Lawsuit Like a Recruiting Board
Wright put up 39 catches for 635 yards and five touchdowns in 15 games for Ole Miss in 2025. Harris started all 15, finished with 58 tackles, 9.0 tackles for loss, and three sacks at 6-foot-8 and 330 pounds. Those are not charity cases. Those are proven SEC producers who bounced around undrafted free agent camps, got cut in August, and found the door cracked open by a judge who said the NCAA left them hanging on eligibility rules that shifted under their feet.
Kiffin did not hide from it at his Monday press conference. “At the end of the day, because of these rulings, they’re either going to play for you or they’re going to play somewhere else around the country. So we’ve made the decision to recruit them, like probably most people are.” He added the softer version too: in general NFL players should not come back, but this was unique because the judge found these kids should have known about a fifth year when they made decisions in December.
I buy the unique part. I do not buy the innocence. Reaching into active NFL camps and encouraging a lawsuit is a different species of recruiting. Texas grabbed Cole Hutson after minicamps without a signed contract. Colorado had a broader Class of 2022 window. LSU went further. They treated cutdown day as an early signing period and used the courthouse as the clearinghouse.
The SEC presidents and chancellors saw it and flinched. Their statement landed hard: college sports are for college athletes. By Tuesday they had a policy barring member schools from rostering anyone who had declared for the draft without proper withdrawal, signed a pro contract, or appeared on a pro roster. Commissioner Greg Sankey got enforcement power. Half-season coach suspensions and budget fines were floated in the reporting. LSU had already voted for the principle and then watched the machinery turn toward the exact players Kiffin had just landed.
The Ban Exists. The Court Date Still Does Too.
Here is what I cannot shake. Wright was the first active-NFL-roster player to hit the portal this way after the Browns waived him. Harris got cut by the Saints earlier with a foot issue and called it a business decision on Instagram when he flipped to LSU. Tuihalamaka never even signed a pro deal and still committed after the TRO. The SEC rule and the Louisiana order are now pointing at each other with LSU’s season opener against Clemson on September 5 and another hearing set for August 31. Somebody blinks or somebody gets punished, and the clock is already cruel.
I have watched Kiffin operate long enough to know he does not do half measures. He built a top transfer class, sat at roughly No. 11 in the preseason AP, and still kept dialing. When people called it messy, he said it was wrong to be critical of the kids because a judge said they were wronged. That is classic Kiffin: put the moral weight on the athletes while the scheme runs through his office. The players get the eligibility. He gets the bodies. The conference gets the headache.
The larger sport created this vacuum. The 5-for-5 model left the Class of 2022 in a gray zone. Lawsuits filled it. Kiffin just drove the bus into the opening faster than anyone else. I do not blame Wright or Harris for taking the money and the snaps when the NFL said no. I blame the people who spent years building unrestricted free agency in college and then acted shocked when a coach treated NFL practice squads like the portal.
August 31 will tell us whether a state court order still trumps a conference bylaw when the pads go on. Until then, LSU has three former NFL-adjacent players on the board and a coach who already admitted he would rather have them than watch someone else get them. That is the whole game now. Kiffin just played it first and loudest, and the rest of the league is still writing the rulebook while he hands out helmets.
