The SEC took its fight over LSU’s roster plans into federal court on Thursday, filing suit against the school, head football coach Lane Kiffin and other administrators as the conference battles the possibility of former NFL players ending up on the Tigers’ team.
At the center of the case is a group of potential LSU football players who spent time on NFL training camp rosters. The conference is asking for both a preliminary and permanent injunction that would stop LSU from forcing the SEC to be tied to conduct the league says breaks its rules.
The filing lands as another legal fight over the same issue is playing out in Louisiana state court. There, a hearing on a preliminary injunction could shape the eligibility of several athletes, including tight end Dae’Quan Wright and defensive tackle Zxavian Harris, both former Ole Miss players under Kiffin. Wright and Harris signed NFL contracts this offseason and are now challenging the NCAA’s new age-based eligibility rule in an effort to get back to college football.
The SEC did not hide its view of what LSU was doing. “Despite the SEC’s longstanding rules prohibiting professional athletes from returning to college athletics, Defendants saw this as an opportunity to be exploited,” the filing reads. “They began an orchestrated campaign to recruit professional athletes to join LSU’s football roster for the 2026-27 season.”
According to the lawsuit, the SEC recently clarified and reemphasized an NCAA rule that bars athletes who signed professional contracts from returning to college football, and LSU voted in favor of those actions. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is expected to testify at Thursday’s hearing in Louisiana on behalf of the conference.
The filing also says LSU’s actions have crossed a line. “Defendants have continued their campaign to engage in willful efforts to recruit and soon roster professional athletes in direct defiance of the Professionalism Rules,” the filing reads. “Defendants’ conduct has already harmed the Conference and threatens to cause further substantial harm if not curbed.”
The SEC has already said it will follow whatever ruling comes out of the Louisiana state court, a decision that could affect Wright, Harris and roughly 30 other former college athletes. But in federal court, the conference says it is not trying to have any athletes declared ineligible. Instead, it wants to “disassociate from conduct that directly undermines” the conference.
In practical terms, the SEC is seeking the power to enforce rules and sanctions against member schools to keep LSU - or any other league school - from rostering and playing athletes who signed professional contracts after leaving college.
The backdrop is the NCAA’s recently simplified eligibility system, which gives every athlete five years to play five seasons. That change did not cover fourth-year seniors who had just finished their eligibility, and it set off a wave of lawsuits from recruits in the 2022 high school class looking for an extra year.
No. 11 LSU is scheduled to play Clemson in Baton Rouge on Saturday evening, and rosters have to be finalized by the end of Friday.
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