As SEC presidents and chancellors get ready to meet Thursday on LSU’s membership, the biggest question hanging over the conference is simple: what if they actually vote to push the Tigers out?
The answer, according to the reporting around the issue, would be messy in a hurry. Television contracts, conference schedules, ticket revenue and the competitive balance across nearly every LSU sport could all be thrown into uncertainty.
And under the SEC Constitution, removing a member against its will would take a two-thirds vote from the conference’s presidents and chancellors - 11 of the 16 schools. Any motion to terminate LSU would also have to lay out an effective date.
ESPN reported that the SEC is not expected to actually remove LSU. The outlet said the filing instead underscores how serious the conference is about asserting its legal authority to enforce its rules.
The fight is still moving ahead even after LSU filled the final two spots on its 105-player football roster, which kept the Tigers from adding Dae’Quan Wright or Zxavian Harris this season.
If the conference did go through with expulsion, the timing would be a huge problem, said David Ridpath, a sports business professor at Ohio University.
“If they would expel them, does that mean immediate expulsion or does that mean at the end of the year?” Ridpath said.
“If you expel them now, why should LSU play Ole Miss, and why should LSU play Alabama. I mean you could throw the entire season into chaos.”
Ridpath also pointed to the long-range tangle that would follow, from future conference games already on the books to television deals stretching years ahead.
“I mean you have conference games scheduled out for years, television contracts,” Ridpath said. “There are a lot of other things involved here than just simply kicking someone out of the conference.”
Matt Moscona, host of 104.5 ESPN Baton Rouge and LouisianaSports.Net, said the ripple effects would go well beyond football. He pointed to the SEC’s television agreement with ESPN, the conference’s new nine-game football schedule and the revenue attached to home games.
“If you’re expelling LSU, you’re expelling them for football, and basketball, and baseball, and every other sport that you have scheduled for this year and have future schedules already locked in,” Moscona said.
“It would be an absolute cataclysmic mess to expel LSU from the Southeastern Conference.”
Moscona said LSU could function outside the SEC, but only after a major reset in how it operates.
“LSU could survive without the SEC,” Moscona said. “It would just be a completely different existence.”
That would mean, in theory, building a new media rights setup and piecing together independent schedules for football and the rest of the athletic department. Ridpath added that other conferences would likely have interest if LSU suddenly became available.
“As far as other conferences taking them, I think other conferences would,” Ridpath said.
Still, both men doubted the dispute would ever reach that endpoint. Ridpath said, “I don’t think that this warrants full expulsion,” while Moscona said, “There’s just no world where it makes sense for either side to let this happen.”
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, was even more blunt.
“That’s bone deep, down to the marrow stupid,” Kennedy said. “I’ve got rocks in my driveway that are smarter than that. They’re not going to throw LSU out of the SEC.”
The SEC’s Zoom meeting is scheduled for Thursday, and the conference has not said whether the media or public will be able to watch it live.
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