LSU Wants Three Former NFL Players on the Field Saturday. Rival SEC Schools Are Weighing Expulsion to Stop It.
- 16-0, then 15-0 SEC presidents' votes on Aug. 26: unanimous (LSU included) to bar athletes with pro-league contracts or roster time; 15-0 with LSU abstaining on the penalty structure — Front Office Sports, ESPN
- Half a season + 50% the penalty for any SEC school that rosters a banned player — a head-coach suspension plus a fine equal to half the sport's annual operating budget and loss of voting rights — ESPN, CBS Sports
- 42 athletes plaintiffs in the Louisiana lawsuit (up from 33) seeking the fifth season of eligibility the NCAA denied the high-school class of 2022 — CBS Sports
- Thursday, Sept. 3 the preliminary-injunction hearing in Baton Rouge that decides whether Wright, Harris, and Tuihalamaka can be rostered — two days before LSU hosts Clemson — ESPN
On Thursday morning in Baton Rouge, a state judge will decide whether three men who spent this August in NFL training camps can suit up for LSU this season — and whether the Southeastern Conference has any power to stop them if he says yes. Tight end Dae’Quan Wright played briefly for the Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns. Defensive lineman Zxavian Harris signed as an undrafted free agent with the New Orleans Saints. Edge rusher Junior Tuihalamaka declared for the NFL draft, went unselected, and never signed anywhere. All three want to play college football again, and all three have LSU head coach Lane Kiffin recruiting them personally.
The fight traces back to a single rule change. In June 2026, the NCAA adopted a new eligibility standard allowing five playing seasons within a five-year window — but declined to apply it retroactively to the high school class of 2022, the players whose college careers began just before the rule existed. Dozens of those athletes sued, arguing the NCAA was arbitrarily denying them a fifth season other classes will get automatically. A Louisiana judge agreed. Then, according to multiple reports, Kiffin started making calls.
The SEC’s presidents and chancellors voted 16-0 on Aug. 26 — LSU included — to bar any athlete from an SEC roster who had declared for the NFL, NBA, or WNBA draft without properly withdrawing, signed a contract with a professional team, or appeared on a professional roster. A second vote, 15-0 with LSU abstaining, attached the penalties: any coach or school that rosters a banned player faces a half-season suspension for the head coach, a fine equal to 50 percent of that sport’s annual operating budget, and the loss of the school’s SEC voting privileges. LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry voted for the underlying ban; it was only the penalty structure LSU refused to bless.
The rule exists because of Wright and Harris specifically. Both played for Kiffin at Ole Miss in 2024 and 2025 — Wright caught 66 passes for 1,029 yards and nine touchdowns across those two seasons — before entering this year’s NFL draft process undrafted. Wright signed with the Eagles, was waived, was claimed by the Browns, and was released again in late August; Harris signed with the Saints and was cut in final roster trims. Both then agreed to return to LSU. Tuihalamaka, a Notre Dame transfer, is the cleaner case: he declared for the draft but never signed a professional contract anywhere, which is why he was the first of the group cleared to rejoin a college roster. LSU is also bringing back Jack Pyburn, a former Tigers defensive end waived by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The players’ path back to college runs through two separate state courtrooms. In Baton Rouge, Judge William Jorden of Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court granted a temporary restraining order to a class of athletes — 33 plaintiffs, later 42 — seeking the fifth season the NCAA had denied them. On Aug. 28, Jorden amended that order to add the SEC and Commissioner Greg Sankey as parties, explicitly barring the conference from enforcing its new penalty rule against LSU while the case proceeds. In Dallas, Judge Martin Hoffman issued a parallel restraining order on Aug. 27 covering 41 athletes nationwide — including NFL wide receiver Jordan Hudson and linebacker Wesley Bissainthe — writing that any player who would have been eligible for a fifth season under the new rule “is eligible today.”
The SEC’s public position, laid out in a statement Aug. 30, is to comply now and fight later: the conference said it would honor Jorden’s order but was “prepared to contest the allegations in the plaintiffs’ petition at Thursday morning’s hearing and defend the SEC’s rights as a voluntary association.” Tony Clayton, the Baton Rouge attorney representing the Louisiana plaintiffs, was blunter in a local radio interview: “I don’t believe the SEC, nor this Commissioner Sankey guy, can anoint himself God” and strip athletes of their “constitutional rights.”
What happens if LSU wins Thursday is its own separate fight. Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported Aug. 31 that general counsels and university presidents at the conference’s other 15 schools — everyone but LSU — have begun exploring what one source called “extreme measures”: expelling LSU from the SEC, placing the program on conference probation, organizing a boycott of games against LSU, or filing a federal lawsuit against the school directly. The talks are described as membership-led rather than driven by the conference office, and both an SEC spokesperson and an LSU spokesperson declined to comment. One school executive was blunt: “Enough is enough. This is ridiculous.” Another, on the expulsion option: “There are plenty of other schools who will take their place.”
SEC school executives are exploring extreme measures to address LSU’s plans to add former pro players, including boycotting competition, sanctioning the school with probation or expulsion and filing a federal legal challenge, sources tell @YahooSports.
An SEC school official to @YahooSports: “There are plenty of other schools who will take their place.” The feud between league members and LSU has the makings of unprecedented and historic decisions.
The legal terrain complicates any conference-wide response. Public universities generally carry Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity shielding state institutions from certain federal suits — a protection Vanderbilt, the SEC’s lone private school, does not share, which is one reason a federal legal challenge aimed at LSU specifically would be legally unusual. NCAA President Charlie Baker, who has separately described the broader wave of eligibility litigation across the NCAA as a “theater of the absurd” likely to force Congress’s hand, has said the pattern of courts overriding decades-old NCAA rules “without even having a trial” is “wildly destabilizing.”
Kiffin has been careful in public. “I probably am in the minority of how I make decisions,” he told reporters this week, “but I feel like my decisions should be in the best interest of the players in this room.” On the recruiting itself: “At the end of the day, through these injunctions, they’re going to play for you or play somewhere else around the country. So we made the decision to recruit them, like most people probably are.” Asked what happens if Jorden’s order is reversed Thursday, Kiffin said LSU would “absolutely” fall back in line with the SEC.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R-LA) has not been careful at all. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” Landry said, arguing the SEC accepted earlier court rulings restoring eligibility to Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia and Ole Miss transfer Trinidad Chambliss without objection. “Why is this different?” he asked. “You can’t tell athletes their college careers are over, watch them move on, change the rules later, and then punish them for not predicting the future.” Landry added that “President Trump and [Nick] Saban were right” that college sports need Congress to intervene — a nod to the still-stalled Protect College Sports Act, which LSU itself had opposed in July over an unrelated media-rights dispute.
Jorden’s hearing Thursday determines whether his temporary order becomes a preliminary injunction, keeping Wright, Harris, and Tuihalamaka eligible through the season, or gets stayed while the underlying lawsuit continues — in which case the SEC’s ban, and its penalties, would apply. LSU’s 105-man roster locks Friday, one day before the Tigers host Clemson at Tiger Stadium in a nationally televised opener with ESPN’s “College GameDay” broadcasting from campus. The Dallas case, covering a larger group of athletes nationwide, has its own hearing scheduled for Sept. 11.
One more wrinkle complicates the players’ calculus: the NFL has clarified that any player who returns to college during the 2026 season forfeits the right to sign with an NFL club for the rest of that season, though a released player remains free to sign with another NFL team, join the CFL, or return to college without being bound by future draft rules. For Wright and Harris, that makes Thursday’s ruling close to a one-way door — whichever way Judge Jorden rules, an NFL front office is unlikely to give either man a second look this fall. Whether they spend it in Tiger Stadium is now up to him.
LSU coach Lane Kiffin is trying to roster three players with 2026 NFL experience — Dae’Quan Wright, Zxavian Harris, and Junior Tuihalamaka — after a Louisiana court found the NCAA improperly denied their high-school class a fifth season of eligibility. The SEC voted 16-0 to ban such players and 15-0 (LSU abstaining) to penalize any school that fields one anyway, then was enjoined from enforcing that penalty by the same judge. A preliminary-injunction hearing Thursday in Baton Rouge, two days before LSU hosts Clemson, will determine whether that injunction holds — while 15 rival SEC schools are separately weighing whether to boycott, sanction, or expel LSU over the dispute.
