The Southeastern Conference (SEC) has filed an amendment to its federal lawsuit against Louisiana State University (LSU) and its head football coach, Lane Kiffin, seeking the authority to expel the school from the conference.
“In the filing, the SEC said its presidents and chancellors will meet Thursday to decide whether to terminate LSU as an SEC member institution pursuant to Section 3.1.5 of the SEC Constitution and Bylaws, which gives the presidents the ‘plenary power and authority with respect to all affairs of the Conference of any type or nature whatsoever,’ including the power to ‘[t]ake all actions specified and contemplated in Article 3 [of the Constitution] in their sole discretion,’” ESPN’s Pete Thamel writes.
If the league proceeds to a vote to expel LSU, an eventuality still considered unlikely, it would require a two-thirds vote of university presidents. According to the complaint, the conference plans to vote on LSU’s membership status on September 10th.
“The SEC and its member universities have the right to establish, through agreed-upon governance procedures, the rules under which they voluntarily compete and to expect those rules to be followed,” the SEC said in a statement. “A commitment to those rules, and to the core principles of the Southeastern Conference, is an essential element of SEC membership.
“Today’s filing is necessary to defend that right and preserve the Conference’s ability to govern competition among its members.”
The SEC’s amended filing specifically references an incident from Saturday night’s game against Clemson, in which Kiffin quipped to a reporter during a halftime interview, “Imagine if we had pro players.”
The comments refer to the controversy that initially prompted the SEC to sue the school over Kiffin’s recruiting of former NFL players to LSU’s roster.
In the suit, the SEC makes it clear that those comments “stand in sharp contrast to the silence by the President and Athletic Director of LSU” and that “they confirm the lack of institutional control over the athletics program at LSU that is required by Article 6 of the SEC Constitution and by the remaining provisions of the Constitution and Bylaws.”
The SEC tried to block LSU from adding any former NFL players to its roster by filing a federal suit last week seeking an injunction to prevent the school from violating the conference’s recently passed rules forbidding the addition of players who had signed contracts with, or attempted to make their way onto, NFL rosters.
However, a Baton Rouge judge issued a temporary restraining order clearing the way for two former NFL players – Dae’Quan Right and Zxavian Harris – to join the LSU roster. The order also prevented LSU from taking any subsequent action against the players or the team once on the roster.
As part of its amended complaint, the SEC is seeking to “prevent LSU officials and their attorneys from taking ‘any action to block or interfere with the meeting scheduled for September 10th or with the exercise by the Conference and its member institutions of their First Amendment rights.’”
As Thamel writes, “Every SEC school except for LSU also agreed commissioner Greg Sankey could issue severe penalties to any school that put a former pro on its roster. The potential punishments include suspending the head coach for half of the regular season and a fine equal to half of the team’s annual operating budget — tens of millions of dollars. At the conclusion of an all-day hearing in Baton Rouge last week, the Louisiana state judge told the SEC it was not allowed to enforce the new rules or penalize LSU if it decided to put any of the athletes in the lawsuit on its roster.”
LSU has declined ESPN’s request for comment.