Leaders of the Southeastern Conference will meet Thursday to discuss whether to take the extraordinary step of kicking LSU out of the league in the wake of an ugly feud over whether players who spent time in the NFL should be allowed back on the team’s roster this season.
On Tuesday, the SEC amended the federal lawsuit it filed against LSU last week, asking the judge in the case to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the school from taking action to block or interfere with the Thursday meeting of university presidents and chancellors.
A vote of at least two-thirds of the conference’s CEOs would be needed to dump LSU, which is a founding member of the conference that was started in 1933. A declaration that Commissioner Greg Sankey included with the league’s legal filing made the planned meeting sound like more than posturing. In it, Sankey said school presidents met to discuss the LSU situation last Friday.
“The consensus … was and continues to be that LSU’s continued membership in the conference would be inconsistent with the publicly stated values and principles of the conference and its remaining member institutions” even if LSU doesn’t put the former NFL players on its roster, he said.
An LSU spokesman declined immediate comment.
The SEC established a rule forbidding teams to bring players with NFL experience back on their roster. But last Friday, a judge in Baton Rouge barred the league from enforcing it, a decision that was heartily celebrated by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and the state attorney general, Liz Murrill, who was added as a defendant. Ms. Murrill called the SEC’s lawsuit “legal garbage” shortly after it was filed last week.
Two of the players, Zxavian Harris and Dae’Quan Wright, have been practicing with the team but were not placed on the roster in advance of last Saturday’s 51-10 win over Clemson. They still could be added, and Sankey made note of two roster spots that have been left open for that possibility.
In a statement, the SEC said it has the right to establish rules and “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,” the statement said.
Sankey took it a step further, saying in his declaration that SEC presidents were concerned LSU’s president, Wade Rousse, and athletic director Verge Ausberry had no “meaningful control” over new coach Lane Kiffin or the football program.
“In light of the recalcitrance, lack of institutional control, and serious harm caused by the statements and conduct of LSU,” the school presidents, other than Rousse, called for the meeting, Sankey said.
He said the meeting was to consider kicking out LSU “whether LSU renounces its intention to roster and play professional players on its football team, or not.”
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