The Southeastern Conference filed an amended complaint in federal court this week seeking legal authority to expel LSU, a step that would mark the first conference-initiated removal of a member school in the league’s 94-year history.
The amended suit extends a case the SEC filed a week earlier as it tries to enforce rules that bar athletes who have signed professional contracts from returning to college competition. The conference argues in the filing that continued association with LSU, in the language of the complaint, “violates the Conference’s fundamental First Amendment rights” and that an injunction is “necessary to prevent the irreparable harm that the SEC will suffer if it cannot remove a member.”
According to the filing, a special meeting of the conference has been scheduled for Thursday at which “potential termination” is on the agenda. The league said in a Tuesday statement that its member universities have the right to establish rules “under which they voluntarily compete and to expect those rules to be followed.”
At the center of the case are two LSU players, defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and tight end Dae’Quan Wright, whose eligibility hinges on whether players who previously signed NFL contracts can return to college. A Louisiana state judge granted a preliminary injunction clearing them to play, a ruling that ran counter to SEC rules. LSU left both off its roster for a 51-10 win over Clemson to open the season.
The SEC’s federal complaint runs 44 pages and names LSU head coach Lane Kiffin 32 times, focusing on his roster-building efforts and referencing prior reporting that he had contacted players on NFL rosters or their representatives about pursuing litigation to return to college.
Only two prior separations of members from the SEC have occurred, both driven by the departing school. The most recent came in 1966 when Tulane left the conference. Among Power Four conferences in the 21st century, the only comparable case is the Big East’s 2004 vote to remove Temple over the state of its football program. A federal ruling in the SEC’s favor would, in effect, extend the conference’s self-governance authority into areas the NCAA has largely been unable to police, at a time when a proposed federal law known as the Protect College Sports Act has not advanced through Congress.
