The Odds Have Swung in LSU's Direction, But Lane Kiffin Isn't Ready to Cash In Yet

Lane Kiffin will coach his first game at LSU on Saturday night against Clemson, which ordinarily would be enough material for one college football weekend.

This is Lane Kiffin, after all. The man doesn’t need additional plot lines.

Instead, LSU will enter Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge having spent the week fighting the SEC and NCAA over whether two players who were in NFL training camps last month should be allowed to return to college football.

The strangest part of it all is that LSU appears to have won that fight, but then declined to collect.

The SEC’s Argument Against

The Tigers left tight end Dae’Quan Wright and defensive lineman Zxavian Harris off the 105-player roster submitted for the opener, despite a Louisiana judge granting a preliminary injunction that cleared a path for dozens of former pros, the two of them included, to return. LSU still has openings, so the fight is not necessarily over.

Wright, who signed with the Philadelphia Eagles after playing for Kiffin at Ole Miss, was claimed by the Cleveland Browns, then was waived. Harris, who signed with the New Orleans Saints, was also released during the training camp period. Neither had become an official NFL player, but both crossed the line that college sports have traditionally treated as irreversible.

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The SEC has pushed back hard as its members voted 15–0 to ban former pros, and the conference sued LSU and Kiffin himself in federal court. Other major conferences have backed similar restrictions, insisting there still needs to be some separation between college and professional sports.

It’s Not A Strong Argument

That argument would sound stronger if college football hadn’t spent the past several years installing revenue sharing, NIL collectives, transfer free agency, multimillion-dollar coaching contracts, and rosters assembled with roughly the same sentimentality as fantasy football.

College football, insisting it is definitely not professional football, has started to resemble three kids in a trench coat insisting they are absolutely old enough to be in the bar.

Clemson’s Dabo Swinney has been college football’s most committed holdout — and sometimes punching bag — against exactly this, as he’s spent years refusing the transfer portal on principle. This week he called the state of the sport “embarrassing,” though he was careful to aim it at the system rather than the players. “I don’t blame the kids,” Swinney said.

He also let slip what preparing for this particular LSU team required. “We spent this last week or so studying the Browns, the Cowboys, the Saints, and the Bucs,” Swinney said sarcastically, noting that NFL film was what Clemson was using to get ready for their Tiger counterpoint.

Kiffin, who normally is game for a matching of wits, didn’t bother to defend the situation and let one of his players make his point for him. “This is how it works at the next level,” Kiffin recalled the player telling him. “This is how the real world works.”

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Has College Football Created this Problem?

When your locker room is writing your labor-economics argument for you, the amateurism cart has probably already left the barn.

For decades, college football could justify unusual eligibility restrictions by pointing to the amateur status of the athletes. That became harder once players started earning serious money, transferring freely, and taking direct revenue sharing from the colleges. Now Kiffin has simply followed the logic to its natural resting place. If this is increasingly a professional labor market, why shouldn’t a player be allowed to test the market and be allowed back ?

Neither Wright nor Harris is a piece LSU desperately needs to beat Clemson, and yet they have become the center of one of college football’s strangest eligibility fights.

For now, though, the revolution will have to wait, as No. 11 LSU, favored by roughly 10 points, hosts Clemson at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, and Kiffin will finally get to the most uncomplicated part of his job.

Coach a game.

source https://www.mensjournal.com/sports/the-odds-have-swung-in-lsus-direction-but-lane-kiffin-isnt-ready-to-cash-in-yet