Enjoy the wins, LSU fans, as college sports crumbles before our eyes
· Yahoo Sports
Clouds pass over Tiger Stadium on Monday, March 20, 2023, on LSU’s campus in Baton Rouge (Matthew Perschall/Louisiana Illuminator)
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Part of me really enjoyed the beatdown LSU administered Saturday night to Clemson at Tiger Stadium, unquestionably cementing the venue’s status as the real “Death Valley.” But even the lopsided outcome won’t shake the funk I’ve felt since well before the season opener.
My typical enthusiasm for the start of the college football season is tempered by its most prominent programs’ headlong leap into an out-of-control arms race. Making matters worse is LSU coach Lane Kiffin’s insistence that two former players who flirted with the pro ranks are worth LSU hurtling deeper into the black hole, though he decided late Tuesday to finalize the Tigers’ roster without them.
Let’s set aside for now whether the 42 athletes seeking a fifth year of college eligibility have any grounds for the lawsuit they’ve filed in Louisiana. I think the question before the state court is a legitimate one, though the answer won’t resolve the bigger issue.
Let’s also not pretend that college sports was a pristine landscape prior to name, image and likeness deals or revenue-sharing. Maybe there weren’t any millionaires on the field, but you can’t ignore decades of players benefiting from benevolent boosters eager to provide new cars, mortgage payments, no-show jobs and hundred-dollar handshakes.
Most troublesome to me is that elected officials, including Louisiana’s leadership, have entered the fray with a sense of righteousness that risks further legitimizing an apparatus likely to implode college athletics as we know it.
Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a brief in support of the athletes trying to rejoin their college teams, citing a “broken” system and its arbitrary NCAA policy decision.
It’s not that Murrill doesn’t have good points here. It’s that she and Gov. Jeff Landry shouldn’t have inserted themselves into the debate in the first place. Their involvement serves only to politicize an already murky matter that won’t find clarity at the state level.
Landry’s support for Kiffin during the controversy — “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” — is hardly constructive. It’s an implicit endorsement that no matter how fault-ridden the system might be, LSU should seek every avenue possible to gain a competitive edge.
But the attorney general is no longer on the sidelines, and the governor has just one degree of separation. After filing a federal lawsuit against LSU and its board last week, the Southeastern Conference replaced the defendants Tuesday with Murrill, Kiffin, athletics director Verge Ausberry and the individual members of the LSU Board of Supervisors who Landry appointed or reconfirmed.
In a nutshell, the SEC claims Murrill and LSU’s leadership are conspiring to subvert its authority to enforce league rules that bar pro athletes. The 16 presidents from its member schools are scheduled to meet Thursday for a possible vote on whether LSU should remain part of the SEC, according to the federal court filing.
In an interview Tuesday with Matt Moscona of ESPN Radio-Baton Rouge, Murrill said the amended lawsuit is an attempt from the SEC to prevent her and LSU from blocking Thursday’s vote — something the attorney general said she and the university have no intent on doing.
Exhibits in the amended filing submitted Tuesday to the U.S. District Court for Northern Alabama include posts from Murrill’s social media accounts in which she states her support of the player plaintiffs in the Louisiana case and calls the SEC’s lawsuit “garbage & frivolous.”
“Defendant Murrill’s actions were taken in active concert with the other Defendants and in furtherance of a coordinated effort by Louisiana state actors, including the Governor and officials at LSU, to override the SEC’s governance of its own association,” the SEC’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
Reading between those lines, I see the Southeastern Conference trying to establish authority over a rising member institution and its outlaw coach who are intent on forging their own path in the college sports landscape. The NCAA is growing more obsolete by the second, if it isn’t already there, and the SEC wants to have a prominent say-so in the new system that takes shape. The conference can’t do that if LSU has a voice as loud or louder at the table.
The chance that LSU actually gets the boot from its peers, who all relish the Fighting Tigers’ hefty contributions to their bottom line, is about as good as Dabo Swinney winning Coach of the Year honors. But should a vote actually take place, it would be yet another sign that the current iteration of college sports is not long for this world.
History shows the Southeastern Conference and commissioner Greg Sankey can’t claim the high ground in this argument. The league has previously allowed former pro athletes to compete at its member schools, conflicting directly with the stance it’s taken against LSU.
My hope is that LSU fans and their SEC rivals recognize no winner will emerge from this showdown over the long term, save for the lawyers involved. Now that the attorney general is a party to the federal case, public dollars will pay for her defense.
There are nearly 60 lawsuits with some 450 former college players seeking eligibility, and they are all part of the mess that won’t disappear even once decisions are made in the cases.
The Tigers’ dominance on the field and Kiffin’s loose cannon antics might provide a nice distraction in the coming months, but let’s not be lulled into believing they aren’t evidence of a structure with a severely compromised foundation.