One night before the SEC is scheduled to ask a federal judge in Alabama for a temporary restraining order, LSU has finalized its roster for the upcoming season.
After nearly three weeks of court appearances involving multiple athletes in the Louisiana case, including former Ole Miss players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, the Tigers decided not to add either player to its roster at any point this season.
On Tuesday night, LSU head coach Lane Kiffin finalized the roster by adding Gabriel Reliford and Aidan Anding, bringing the Tigers to the 105-player limit.
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The decision comes after Wright and Harris amended their complaints in district court to add the SEC as a defendant.
A judge granted the players an injunction last week following a 12-hour hearing that featured SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey testifying in front of a packed courtroom in Baton Rouge.
Not even ten minutes into his testimony, there was a rumbling within the courtroom as word started to spread that the SEC had filed its own lawsuit against LSU, Lane Kiffin, AD Verge Ausberry and other members of the Tigers athletic department.
“Did you authorize the SEC to sue LSU and coach Lane Kiffin?” attorney Tony Clayton asked Sankey.
When asked why the conference took that step, Sankey pointed to the authority of the presidents and chancellors he represents.
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“We established our First Amendment right for freedom of association, so that our conference can make decisions and our members can make decisions about membership,” Sankey said.
Now, five days after the injunction was granted, with school officials releasing a roster on Friday night before this past weekend’s game against Clemson that did not include both football players involved in the lawsuit, LSU has made its final decision.
But, even with this decision made by the Tigers athletic department, there is still a scheduled hearing on Wednesday inside a Birmingham federal court, where the SEC is seeking a temporary restraining order that would allow the conference to enforce rules pertaining to pro-athletes making a return to college athletics.
In addition to seeking the ability to enforce its rules, this TRO could also grant the SEC cover when it comes to penalizing LSU for actions related to this entire ordeal.
“Today, the Southeastern Conference, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, filed a request for a temporary restraining order in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama to protect the right of the Conference and its member institutions to govern themselves,” the SEC said in a statement.
“The SEC and its member universities have the right to establish, through agreed-upon governance procedures, the rules under which they voluntarily compete and to expect those rules to be followed,” the SEC noted. “A commitment to those rules, and to the core principles of the Southeastern Conference, is an essential element of SEC membership.
“Today’s filing is necessary to defend that right and preserve the Conference’s ability to govern competition among its members.”
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In the early morning hours of Sunday, following LSU’s 51-10 win over Clemson, LSU head coach Lane Kiffin spoke about the tough decision to not add those two players to his roster, touching on his relationship with Dae’Quan Wright that dates back to Ole Miss.
“I’m just glad we played the way we did. Because I get it, even if we won close and ugly, the whole story would have been, ‘Man, I screwed the team up by doing this,” Kiffin noted. “I’ve been criticized heavily the last two weeks and I get that. I understand that. But my job is not to please you and worry about what you’re going to write. My job is what I believe is right, and I believe we were fighting for what was right for those kids.
“I’m not going to get into all the reasons, but that’s what I believe. Maybe people don’t like that, but they don’t understand that. Maybe if they knew my relationship with Dae’Quan [Wright] they would.”
Kiffin has mentioned that when he was leaving Ole Miss for LSU, it was Dae’Quan Wright who stood up in the Rebels team gathering and told his teammates that he wanted Lane to lead the team through their CFP run.
In their filing on Tuesday, the SEC made a number of accusations against LSU for their handling of this entire matter, claiming that nobody at LSU can control head coach Lane Kiffin.
“Expressed great concern that Defendants [President Wade] Rousse and [Athletic Director Verge] Ausberry have no meaningful control over Defendant Kiffin or the football program at LSU … The consensus at the September 4 meeting was and continues to be that LSU’s demonstrated lack of institutional control at the University level—including complete lack of control over Defendant Kiffin’s actions.”
Now, with neither player returning to college football, most importantly at LSU, the question now centers around how far this messy kerfuffle with the SEC will go.