LSU appears to be backing away from the showdown with the SEC over two former NFL players, and the conference’s planned Thursday meeting is still on the calendar.
On Wednesday afternoon, LSU President Wade Rousse sent a letter to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey saying the school will not roster the two former professional players who were granted a fifth year of eligibility. Rousse made LSU’s position plain in the letter: “The roster is now locked for the season.
LSU complied with SEC rules. This issue is moot.”
He also said LSU would not try to challenge, disrupt, cancel or delay the SEC officials’ meeting scheduled for Thursday.
Sankey then forwarded Rousse’s letter in an email to SEC presidents and chancellors. In that message, he wrote, “The meeting tomorrow of the SEC presidents and chancellors will continue with a revised agenda to be distributed shortly.”
That revised agenda is widely expected to leave out any vote on removing LSU from the conference. The SEC had previously said the special meeting would include consideration of terminating LSU’s membership, but Sankey’s email did not say exactly what would be changed.
Matt Moscona, of Locked On LSU, told WAFB that “there was never, ever, a realistic chance that LSU was going to be voted out of the SEC.”
The letter from Rousse came after a federal hearing scheduled for Wednesday in Birmingham, Alabama, was postponed. That hearing had been aimed at blocking top LSU officials, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and others from interfering with the conference’s First Amendment right to choose its members. According to the order, the hearing will be reset “by a separate order.”
For now, the SEC meeting remains set for Thursday. Moscona also said he believes the two former professional players, who returned to being collegiate athletes for about a week, could have a case to seek civil damages against the NCAA and SEC.
He added, “the legal entanglement is far from over. But thankfully we can stop having this stupid conversation about LSU being expelled from the SEC.”
More developments are expected next week, with Lane Kiffin’s return to Oxford in Week 3 looming on the schedule.
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