There are multiple layers of sound and fury in the SEC threat to kick out LSU over NFL-associated players

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The SEC actually expelling LSU seems unlikely, but it's wild that this debate has gone this far

If you're in SEC territory, your first "sound and fury" thought might be William Faulkner's 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury, about a group of Mississippi siblings as their family comes apart. But the title comes from a work published more than 300 years earlier, the famed "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy written by a different William, part of Shakespeare's renowned tragedy Macbeth. And the full quote from Macbeth himself is in reference to life (in response to the death of his wife), and goes "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Well, we won't call anyone involved idiots at this specific point. But the latest developments in the ongoing Shakespearean drama between Louisiana State University and the SEC (the Southeastern Conference, not the Securities and Exchange Commission) sure do seem full of sound and fury, and yet may wind up signifying almost nothing. The key piece of news there is an amended complaint the conference filed Tuesday in a federal lawsuit against LSU, school football coach Lane Kiffin, and other school administrators. As illustrated in a piece at The Athletic from Justin Williams, Seth Emerson and Matt Baker, the conference is seeking a restraining order against the school, and also stating that its other schools will meet Thursday to vote on booting out the Tigers:

Why is the SEC doing this? Well, that's a complicated story, but the as-short-as-possible version is that LSU and Kiffin have done things the conference doesn't like. Specifically, they've gone against the SEC on the issue of potentially playing former NFL players. This is a wider issue caused by the NCAA's eligibility changes this summer, with the new approach essentially allowing each athlete five years to complete five seasons if they enroll in college no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday (a major change from the old sport-specific systems that included elements such as redshirts, injury waivers, and eligibility extension waivers).

But the association didn't make that move applicable to fourth-year seniors who had just finished their eligibility. That led to multiple lawsuits from some athletes in the high school class of 2022 who believed they should be able to play this fall, and to some early legal successes there (although the full outcome remains to be seen). And, perhaps most controversially, it led to some players who had signed NFL contracts, specifically Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, being included in a Louisiana lawsuit on that.

An initial win for that lawsuit led to Wright and Harris declaring their intentions to go back to college with LSU. (Hey, it's a football- rather than diving-based version of Back To School, a movie that really should get more respect!). An interesting part of that decision is that both Wright and Harris previously played at Ole Miss, and former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin controversially left Oxford to take the head seat in Baton Rouge last December. However, these rulings and declarations also saw the SEC and other conferences issue bold proclamations that they wouldn't permit such shenanigans and chicanery.

The situation then escalated further last week with a Louisiana judge ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. Also, the SEC filed a lawsuit (before that ruling) against LSU, looking for an injunction that would prohibit LSU from playing athletes who signed NFL contracts. There, they argued that LSU doing so would violate the conference's First Amendment rights, associating it with "actions that undermine its rules and core values." It's that lawsuit (in a federal court in Alabama) that's now received this latest amendment. And the comments in that amendment on the SEC potentially kicking out LSU are what's perhaps most significant here. Here's more on that from that first Athletic piece:

Let's break this all down into three key points.

1. The SEC actually kicking out LSU would seemingly cause the conference major damage

As I recently wrote about (premium post) with the NBA-Clippers saga, sports governing bodies such as leagues and conferences are frequently actually incentivized not to worry too much about enforcing their detailed rules unless violations of said rules hit the mainstream world and become an image problem for the league. (This is why investigative journalism efforts such as what Pablo Torre did with the Clippers can be crucial; if the only thing there had been internal complaints from other teams, it's unlikely the saga would have ended with such a significant punishment.) And an incentives-first consideration of what's going on here suggests the situation is far from as dire as the language the parties are using might make it seem.

While the SEC might like to present themselves as concerned with the state of amateur athletics, they are essentially a business. On that front, they're an association of particular schools concerned with making as much money as possible from pooled athletics rights while minimizing the negative impacts from that on their overall member institutions. The latter concern is real to some degree, as there are some bridges too far for wealthy donors and amateurism-first fans. But the incentive there isn't actually about some perceived amateur quality, but rather how donors and fans perceive that. And strong posturing from the SEC here is important on a couple of fronts; it's sending a message of "Yes, we care about amateurism and college sports," and also one of "Yes, we are in charge of our member institutions."

But actually losing LSU would be a huge problem for the SEC. And that's a comment not just drawn from me being a Louisiana resident for the past five years, as I'm not really more partial to the Tigers than any other SEC team (if you want the longer version of my "not really a fan of any team" background, I wrote about it here last year). It's a comment about the reality of the conference and the school. LSU is a school with an outsized impact on its state in many ways (indeed, they even wound up taking over and rebranding the University of New Orleans as LSU-New Orleans recently), and it's a school that truly cares about athletics as a marketing tool in so many ways, including investing huge resources in poaching top coaches across many sports (and now officially players as well in the NIL era, although there were long discussions about booster support for top recruits before that). And TV viewership has it consistently as one of the biggest draws in college sports, especially in football (but far from exclusively, as LSU women's and men's basketball, baseball, softball, gymnastics, and many other sports also draw strongly). There was a good debunking of the "The SEC actually wants to expel LSU" idea on Bluesky earlier today by Ken Childs (who I like for a lot of reasons, including his great bobsleigh/luge/skeleton website Sliding on Ice):

Beyond those teams' current on-field struggles in football (including Clemson getting trucked 51-10 by LSU Saturday), they would seemingly bring nowhere near as much media rights value as the Tigers. And that's the really important part of the equation. The SEC doesn't actually want to get rid of one of its most valuable schools, and it should be noted that college conferences (which have much more flexible membership than pro leagues) very much follow an Orwellian mantra of "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." (Appropriate for a university renowned for its veterinary medicine school.)

The inequality within the SEC came up around Kiffin departing Ole Miss for LSU last December. The two schools are far from equal in the athletic resources they can provide, naysaying the "Why would you move within a conference?" critics. And yes, the SEC could definitely kick out a member school if it figured that school wasn't really helping it; an obvious target there might be Vanderbilt (which, it should be noted, has challenged the conference much less than the likes of LSU). But if the SEC actually expelled LSU, its future would be much more in question than it currently is; it's not clear how tied their media contracts are to their current membership, but kicking out the Tigers would not go over well with their TV partners. And that's why a lot of this looks like posturing for them.

2. LSU probably doesn't want to actually leave the SEC

This one is a little more tentative than the point above. While LSU is already a significant fish within the SEC, the Tigers could perhaps be an even bigger fish elsewhere. And there are the political dimensions here from the involvement of Governor Landry and AG Murrill, who have both been heavily involved with a lot of LSU moves (including in sports) and who have shown a lot of desire to get in jurisdiction fights. There's a whole giant ongoing New Orleans governance mess there that's significant context for this, as explored by Matthew Albright at Nola.com.

But all that aside, the SEC is one of the two most dominant college football conferences (with the Big Ten), particularly in terms of media rights. And the gap between those two conferences and everyone else is growing. Yes, if you're a powerful school like LSU, you would have suitors if you do jump. But David Lee Roth's "Might as well jump" logic isn't necessarily great for schools, especially ones that are already on the inside of the current power structure. And that speaks to why LSU didn't actually roster these players for that beatdown of Clemson, even though the judicial ruling would have given them an excuse to. At the moment, they're being pesky challengers of the status quo, but they haven't yet descended into full armed rebellion.

3. The discussion here is weird thanks to the attention it's received

This is maybe the key point of all this. The conversation here is so far from what it was around the NCAA's attempts to ban Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby over gambling (he ultimately backed out of college football, didn't get into the NFL supplemental draft, and is now waiting for that league's 2027 draft). Sorsby was and is a potential high NFL draft pick, and a player at the most important position on the field who could change a college team's fortunes. Meanwhile, both Wright and Harris had extremely limited offseason-only cups of coffee in the NFL (Harris as an undrafted free agent from May to August with the New Orleans Saints last year, Wright as an undrafted free agent with the Philadelphia Eagles from May to August this year, then for a couple of weeks with the Cleveland Browns this August). It's easy to envision Sorsby making a dramatic impact to a team's on-field fortunes; it's harder to imagine that with Harris or Wright, as even if they did join these Tigers, they wouldn't be at the most crucial positions and wouldn't be the most NFL-coveted players on the roster. This is about maybe making LSU's depth slightly better, not dramatically improving the Tigers' capabilities.

It also should be noted that there was a similar professional eligibility debate in the SEC earlier this year in a different spot. That came around Alabama basketball player Charles Bediako, who spent two seasons with the Crimson Tide in 2021-22 and 2022-23, then went on to a two-way NBA contract with the San Antonio Spurs (despite never playing in the NBA proper) and to time in the NBA G-League, then tried to return to Alabama. Unlike the football players to date, he actually played five games for the Crimson Tide this January and February amidst legal wranglings. And none of that saw any of these sorts of threats of booting Alabama out of the conference. But everything in college athletics takes a backseat to football, and because this is actually a debate about much more than "amateurism principles," that one didn't become as much of a widespread issue.

There isn't necessarily any easy resolution to any of this. And this situation has shown some tensions between LSU and the SEC, which are interesting. But at this point, all indications are that it's in the interests of both of those organizations to remain in a relationship with each other. And thus, the sound and fury here is certainly notable, but it may wind up signifying nothing.