LSU coach Lane Kiffin’s chances of fielding former NFL players improved Thursday night when a Louisiana judge issued a preliminary injunction against the NCAA in a high-profile eligibility case.
East Baton Rouge Parish Judge William Jorden issued his ruling the night before LSU was due to submit its 105-man roster to the Southeastern Conference, which last week announced heavy potential punishment for football and basketball teams that bring in ex-pros.
The ruling clears the way for LSU to list some former NFL players on its roster. How many games they might be eligible to play remains to be seen as the matter continues working its way through the courts.
“It’s not about coach Kiffin. It’s not about LSU. It’s about treating these kids fairly,” said Tony Clayton, an attorney for the athletes. “Today, justice was served. And justice was serve to the SEC. It was served like a cold cup of gumbo. And that judge forced them to eat it.”
The ruling followed a nearly nine-hour hearing in a courtroom less than three miles from the LSU campus. Several athletes took the stand to explain why they should be allowed to return to play college sports for a fifth season — some of them after turning pro.
The commissioner of the powerful SEC argued against them, and the league doubled down by filing a lawsuit against the school in a federal court in Alabama. That lawsuit could become the SEC’s best chance at preventing former pros from playing this season.
Thursday’s hearing was attended by Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill, who filed an athlete-friendly brief in the case. While she did not make any arguments in court, she spoke after the hearing and referred to the SEC’s federal lawsuit against LSU as “legal garbage,” and “frivolous.”
“We’re going to continue to do everything we can to protect the school from those threats,” she said.
The courtroom confrontation came just two days before 11th-ranked LSU opens the season at home against Clemson. Jorden scheduled the hearing over his temporary injunction preventing the NCAA from barring former pros or fifth-year college athletes, a stance reiterated by the SEC and other Power Four conferences in potential punishments adopted last week.
“Lane Kiffin is cold as ice. He’s wonderful to watch. He pushes every limit to try to win,” said New Orleans attorney Jason Williams, representing the SEC. “The SEC exists in part to prevent individual competitive incentives from destroying the common conditions that make college football great.”
Former NFL players testify about modest pay in pros
Former New Orleans Saints defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and former Cleveland Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright, two players who now expect to suit up for LSU within weeks, sat next to each other in the gallery as the hearing began. Both took the stand to say they would not have signed with NFL teams this year had they known they might get another year in college.
Each said they each earned about $1 million in college. Harris said he was paid just $190 in travel expenses by the Saints and spent all of his time with the club rehabbing a foot injury. Wright said he was paid a $25,000 signing bonus by Philadelphia before his brief time with the Browns and would gladly pay that back for the chance to play for LSU.
While both former Mississippi players were unsure how soon they might make their LSU debut, they said after the hearing that they expect to play when the Tigers visit Ole Miss on Sept. 19.
Two LSU soccer players, Jazmin Ferguson and Jocelyn Ollivierre, won earlier court orders and have already played this season. Ferguson testified that she was paid $4,500 by a USL team, but ended her contract and paid the money back in hopes of clearing the way to play for the Tigers again. Two LSU softball players also testified.
The athletes were questioned after SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was on the stand for more than two hours, defending the league’s authority to enforce its longstanding rules barring former pros from returning to play at its 16 member schools — and enforce newly outlined fines and suspensions against programs and coaches. He said school presidents and chancellors felt that they needed to establish ways to hold schools accountable for recruiting professionals back to college.
“The line between professional sports and college sports needs to be maintained,” Sankey testified, adding that the league was concerned about incoming athletes being displaced from limited roster spots.
As he spoke, the SEC filed the federal lawsuit in Alabama against LSU and its leadership, alleging the school had “waged a deliberate and coordinated campaign to recruit professional athletes” in defiance of league rules. The court filing against one of the league’s founding members in 1933 seeks an injunction barring LSU from violating the SEC’s First Amendment rights by forcing it to “associate with conduct that is contrary to the conference’s purpose and mission.”
Questioning of Sankey turns sharp
While questioning Sankey, attorneys for the athletes cited numerous examples of when SEC eligibility rules align with NCAA rules, suggesting the potential for collusion. They questioned why league members met last week to adopt stiff penalties for the very actions addressed in the Louisiana state court’s temporary injunction against the NCAA.
The attorneys also asked why the SEC singled out players who signed contracts with specific U.S.-based leagues — the NFL, NBA and WNBA — but not overseas pro leagues or women’s pro soccer leagues. When Sankey tried to qualify an answer about whether the SEC had previously punished a school for adding a player with previous pro experience, Clayton said, “I didn’t ask how to build a clock. I’m just asking what time it is.”
Sankey acknowledged that there had previously been no such punishment, but that it had been considered against Alabama last basketball season when the Crimson Tide briefly added a former G League player.
Players going to court has become common
The players in question also include former Denver Broncos defensive back Blake Cotton, who like Harris and Wright is hoping to join LSU and Kiffin.
Wright started practicing at LSU this week, too late to be eligible for Saturday’s home opener against Clemson under the NCAA’s required seven days of practice. Harris has committed to LSU, while Cotton, who played at Utah last fall, has been recruited by Kiffin.
All three are among a host of athletes who’ve argued in lawsuits around the country that they are unfairly being denied an opportunity to spend a fifth year in college under newly adopted NCAA rules allowing for five full years of competition. In all, the NCAA says there are approximately 450 athlete plaintiffs seeking additional eligibility through litigation, with some 300 of them winning the ability to play at least for now.
NCAA attorney Taylor Askew said the number of disputes actually strengthens the argument that the NCAA is trying to enforce rules fairly.
“That can’t be arbitrary,” Askew said. “It’s consistency.”
The athletes in the case who signed pro contracts have argued they did so only because current rules that would have allowed them another college season weren’t adopted until after their decisions to sign NFL contracts.
The SEC contended the question before the judge narrowly regarded whether the conference “can enforce and require its member institutions to comply with SEC rules.” The SEC’s new penalties include fines up to half of a given sport’s revenues, up to half-season suspensions for coaches and member universities’ loss of voting privileges on league business matters.
Sankey provided an affidavit stating that SEC university presidents had voted 15-0 in favor of those penalties, with LSU’s Wade Rousse abstaining.
The fight over eligibility between schools and their own conferences and the NCAA has simmered for months and spilled into politics.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry posted on X to attorneys general in Georgia and South Carolina that “calling them ‘NFL players’ is at best disingenuous, and at worst intentionally deceptive.”
“They are not professional football players circling back after years in the NFL,” Landry wrote. “They are college players who were told, by the NCAA, that they were done. So they took the only door that was open — only to watch the NCAA change the lock behind them.”
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—Brett Martel, AP Sports Writer