LSU laid down its sword.
For now.
LSU did not include Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, two former Ole Miss players who signed NFL contracts this offseason, on the roster it submitted to the College Sports Commission on Friday. Neither will play in the Tigers' season opener Saturday against Clemson, despite Wright telling reporters on Thursday he expected to. That move comes one day after a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, judge granted a preliminary injunction that allowed for LSU to roster the players.
Interestingly, LSU left two roster spots open on its 105-player roster and could potentially add those players at a later date. They are both enrolled at the school.
LSU's decision Friday to leave off the two players came after pressure reached unprecedented levels.
On Monday, CBS Sports reported that the SEC was weighing possible forfeiture of games, a legal challenge in federal court and even possible expulsion if LSU didn't back down from wanting to roster the former NFL players. At the time, expulsion was considered "extremely, extremely unlikely but speaks to the level of frustration within the conference that it has even been uttered." Three days later, the SEC filed a federal lawsuit against head coach Lane Kiffin, athletic director Verge Ausberry, the university and others associated with it. And the frustration of SEC presidents and chancellors continued to ratchet up over the course of the week, according to multiple sources.
What once seemed completely unthinkable -- the SEC expelling LSU -- became slightly more realistic by Friday.
Multiple sources believed that if LSU refused to deescalate the situation, the votes were there to expel the institution should that be the path the SEC's leaders decided on. Earlier in the week Georgia attorney general Chris Carr encouraged SEC commissioner Greg Sankey to "take all measures available to address this conduct, up to and including suspending and/or removing LSU from the conference."
Of course, no one ever wanted it to get to that point and saying you'd vote to take drastic action and actually doing it are two very different things. It had already escalated beyond what most thought possible, but the hope was always that eventually LSU would back down. Expulsion was the last-resort nuclear option, but the SEC had multiple punishment tools at its disposal. LSU's roster concession on Friday was thus tantamount to nuclear football disarmment.
The SEC's leaders had granted Sankey full power to punish any school and coach who violates the conference's ban on playing former professional players. The SEC already established penalties that included the head coach being suspended for half the season, a massive fine of up to 50% the program's operating budget and more.
Why has the SEC been willing to fight so hard? It all comes back to a test of its ability to self-govern. One could make the argument this is a one-time issue with the class of 2022 desiring another year of eligibility. Others would point to the increasingly slippery slope every time one of these legal battles unfolds. But this is about so much more than that.
If the SEC wants to step in where the NCAA has been unable to due to legal challenges, it has to be able to enforce its rules. It had to hold the line or it'd risk setting a bad precedent moving forward if its self-governance model takes on greater importance as many expect it to. It's no different than the Big Ten, which considered its vote on whether former pro players should be able to return as the first test of a self-governance model. The issue is that while the 18 Big Ten schools fell in line, one of the SEC's 16 schools refused to do so.
With the might of Louisiana governor Jeff Landry and state attorney general Liz Murrill behind it, LSU had dug its heels in. Kiffin, the focus of new book "Lane Being Lane: The Story of Lane Kiffin, College Football's Agent of Chaos," loves to push the envelope as far as he can. As CBS Sports first reported last month, Kiffin and the Tigers reached out to multiple players on NFL rosters or their representation in an effort to get them to bring a lawsuit against the NCAA and return to school. Those actions prompted the SEC's unprecedented federal lawsuit against Kiffin and LSU.
When Lane is told he can't do something, it just makes him want it that much more. He convinces himself he can win even if more and more opponents align against him. It's a key piece to understanding how it even got this far with many around college athletics questioning whether the seemingly minimal rewards were worth the massive risks.
For now, the temperature around the situation has been turned down. But LSU's decision to leave two roster spots indicates this story isn't quite over. And if LSU moves to add those two players, the deep frustration and disappointment within the SEC could come bubbling back to the surface.
