Kentucky’s miss on Mark Mitchell looked painful in the moment. Now, with LSU tangled in a sprawling SEC fight over eligibility and enforcement, it looks more like the Wildcats sidestepped a mess they never wanted any part of.
The chaos starts with a Louisiana state court ruling that gave more than 40 athletes a fifth year of college eligibility, including several who had already signed professional contracts and even appeared in NFL preseason games. A Baton Rouge judge first blocked the NCAA from enforcing its rules against former pros trying to return to college sports.
Jack Plyburn was one of the names to watch, with the possibility he would head back to LSU if he were cut. He was eventually cut by the Bucs, then signed with the Chiefs and told LSU he would stay in the NFL.
Then came another layer. Late last week, the same judge accepted an amended complaint aimed at stopping the SEC from enforcing its own ban on former professionals.
The league also said it would not enforce its rule that players can only transfer to another conference school while the portal is open, which created the opening that let Mitchell stay. Sources said the SEC would fight that move, and that appears to have been a major factor in Mitchell’s decision to return to Missouri.
LSU has now signaled it will follow the local court order and move forward with adding these former professionals to its roster. That decision has the rest of the SEC boiling.
According to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, high-ranking officials from the league’s other 15 schools are discussing drastic measures to stop LSU. Among the options being floated are boycotting games against the Tigers, putting the school on probation, launching a federal lawsuit, and even expelling LSU from the conference.
The anger is reportedly intense behind the scenes. One anonymous league source said, “Enough is enough.
This is ridiculous.” Another went further, warning, “There are plenty of other schools that would take [LSU’s] place.”
The SEC’s bylaws do not spell out a simple process for ejecting a member, but the presidents and chancellors do have broad power. Under Section 4.1.2, they can ban a school from championship competition and “impose any other penalty which they consider appropriate.”
That makes this more than just a fight over one roster. The conference sees it as a test of whether it can actually govern itself. If one school can blow past a league-wide rule and face no real consequences, the concern is that the SEC loses control over the whole structure.
The 15 other schools are also considering a federal challenge, which brings in the issue of sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. That protection applies to all SEC public universities, with Vanderbilt the lone exception.
There is at least one recent example of a conference taking the fight to court. In June, Brett Yormark and the Big 12 filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Tech to stop the school from playing Brendan Sorsby, a quarterback who admitted to wagering on games while at Cincinnati.
The Big 12 sought an injunction, pointing to its First Amendment rights to enforce its bylaws and the dormant Commerce Clause. That route worked, and Texas Tech eventually parted ways with Sorsby, who is now waiting for next year’s NFL Draft.
For Kentucky, the bigger picture makes the Mitchell loss easier to stomach. Building a roster the old-fashioned way in Lexington is hard enough. Doing it while risking a conference revolt like the one now hovering over LSU would be a far worse trade.
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