LSU played a dangerous game with the SEC. Now the bill is coming due - USA Today

So this is where we are now, and there’s no turning back. No safe exit for LSU. 

This is what happens when you try to serve two masters, when you’re caught in the moment and fueled by the energy — before reality final arrives.

There are two choices for LSU in its four-month legal fight with the SEC, and neither is good: Follow conference rules and burn bridges with state and local politicians, or take your chances in federal court against the SEC.

LSU backed itself into this position with poor decisions and zero foresight, and is now stuck trying to thread the legal needle. And this time, outside the friendly confines of Louisiana jurisdiction.

LSU can get to the Nov. 18 hearing in a federal courtroom in Birmingham, Ala., where the SEC is suing to maintain its governing authority over conference members (see: punish bad actors). LSU can argue semantics and proclaim it never rostered players. 

It can hide behind a legal barricade that players and their representatives shopped for a local judge and found a path to eligibility — not LSU. A path that just happened to strip the SEC of its authority to govern conference members. 

Hey, we’re just following a court order.

They know damn well they’re not just “following a court order.” LSU could’ve ended this nonsense long ago by simply telling football players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, and basketball player RJ Luis Jr., that even if they receive legal relief for eligibility, they’re not eligible to play for LSU. 

A scholarship, a spot on the football and basketball teams, isn’t a legal right. It’s a privilege.

But instead of LSU president Wade Rousse telling athletic director Verge Ausberry the players won’t be part of LSU rosters, and the coaches won’t take the possibility of them playing all the way to the 11th hour before backing down, Rousse bent the knee to state and local politicians and their election-year shenanigans.

And I know this is going to shock you, but the performative and the provocative won the initial battle. It won’t win the war. 

It’s easy to depose SEC commissioner Greg Sankey for three hours in an East Baton Rouge court, asking him critical case-related questions of his annual salary and if he flew to the proceedings on a private jet. Easy to embarrass him, and the rest of the conference by proxy, and get that post-hearing, salivating media bump.

Then real life arrives, and LSU realizes it has simply steeled the resolve of the SEC, which still is considering expulsion, among other punishments, multiple people told USA TODAY Sports.

Meanwhile, LSU football coach Lane Kiffin isn’t backing down from his needling of Sankey and the SEC. 

Week 1, halftime of Clemson rout: “Imagine if we had pro players,” Kiffin said in a brief, on-field interview. 

Week 6, after an overtime loss at Kentucky included a controversial touchdown by UK quarterback Kenny Minchey, who appeared to be stopped of forward progress. Kiffin said SEC line judge Jake Osgood told him, “He’d be killed if he would’ve blown the whistle for the play being stopped, even though it appeared to be stopped.”

Earlier this week, after the SEC announced the annual LSU-Alabama game would be played in the 3:30 p.m. window and not in primetime from Tiger Stadium, Kiffin said, “If someone thinks the SEC wants us to win this year after what’s been going on, they must have just been on Mars the last four months.”

Much like the original missed move of forbidding the rostering of professional players, Rousse could’ve stopped Kiffin intentionally embarrassing the league before it happened. He simply could’ve told Kiffin to steer clear from agitating the league office or the commissioner ― or he will be fired for cause for embarrassing the university.

Rousse instead left Kiffin to his own volition, a move that, while entertaining, is also teeming with danger. 

Which is not unlike this entire ordeal. It looks good and plays well to those in LSU’s orbit hungry for red meat.

But it falls flat and looks like lack of institutional control to the remaining 15 presidents and chancellors of the league. The same group that will decide LSU’s punishment if the SEC wins in court next month. 

There’s no safe exit, LSU. But there is a prudent choice. 

Make it for the first time in four months.   

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.