news-engine

A legal battle could be brewing in the SEC. In a way, it’s already begun. And LSU is on the front lines of the fight. It has been since Aug. 19, when a Baton Rouge judge awarded a temporary restraining order to a group of roughly 30 athletes who filed suit in search of a fifth year of eligibility. That ruling paved the way for coach Lane Kiffin to start adding former NFL players to his first LSU roster — and for the SEC to pass a new rule aimed at prohibiting him and other coaches from doing so. Kiffin isn’t alone. Texas signed a center who participated in NFL minicamps this past summer, and the Kentucky men’s basketball program added a forward who played in NBA Summer League games. But LSU is driving most of the chaos. The Tigers hope to add at least three players to their football team before the season kicks off Sept. 5, and two of them appeared on NFL rosters in August: tight end Dae’Quan Wright and defensive tackle Zxavian Harris. Neither player is eligible to play for LSU under the new SEC rule, which was passed Tuesday evening. But will they challenge the new measure? And if they did, could it hold up in court? The Advocate discussed those questions with five legal experts who each outlined how college athletics reached this point — and what may lie ahead. SEC’s new rule Sam Ehrlich, a former lawyer and Boise State professor who researches legal aspects of the sports industry, generally thinks that conference-specific rules can hold up. The key is competition. The more some rules differ from league to league, the more likely it is that the college sports world can withstand the antitrust lawsuits that have slowly eroded the NCAA’s authority to write and enforce its policies across the last five years. “If you don't like the Big Ten rule,” Ehrlich said, “you can go to the SEC or you can go to the Pac-12 or the MAC or anything else, and those can be considered reasonable substitutes within this market. “So, I think long term, the conference rules are gonna be fine.” But what if the conferences have some of the same rules? That’s where things can get “real, real wacky,” Ehrlich said, especially for the 2022 high school athletes trying to land fifth seasons of eligibility through the courts. Plaintiff attorneys could lump the SEC, the Big Ten or another conference into a lawsuit against the NCAA, and if they do, then a judge could rule that the conferences are acting in concert with the NCAA and are thus subject to the same legal standards. On Wednesday, a Texas judge granted a temporary restraining order to a Texas A&M basketball player who’s played in the NBA G League. In the ruling, the judge chose not to draw a distinction between the NCAA and the SEC, potentially giving the lawyers who represent Wright, Harris and the other Louisiana plaintiffs a blueprint for challenging the league’s new eligibility rule banning former professional players from competition. New Yorks sports lawyer Ryan Mulvaney thinks that conference rules are “just another avenue ripe for litigation.” “That's no different than the issue involving the NCAA,” he said. “If conferences are announcing that (rule), whether now or midseason, I would suspect you'd see orders to show cause be filed, if not joining the conferences with the NCAA or, depending upon what relief has already been provided, against the conferences.” It’s important to point out that the NCAA has picked up a few legal wins recently. The big one was a stay issued last Friday in a Colorado class-action suit. Others have come via state courts in New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee. Louisiana could be next. That case has another hearing scheduled for Monday that could determine whether the plaintiffs get a longer-lasting decision on their eligibility. A new normal? All five experts agreed that the NCAA likely won’t have to worry about NFL players returning to college football beyond this year. The issue, they said, originates from the NCAA’s decision not to grandfather 2022 high school athletes into its new age-based eligibility rules in June. Andrew Brandt, an NFL executive turned Villanova professor and author, pointed out that the NFL rookies trickling back into college football are just trying to play the fifth year that was given to everyone else. “They'll have to figure out what to do with these five to 10 players this year that are getting all the attention,” he said. “But it's not an issue for the future.” Others, such as Tulane law professor Gabe Feldman and Illinois sports lawyer Mitch Gilfillan, agree with Brandt. They think the NFL issue will resolve itself fairly quickly, but Feldman worries that more litigation aimed at different eligibility rules could throw college sports into even more turmoil. “This won't happen next year because everybody will have the full five years,” Feldman said. “So this is probably just a one-year anomaly, but absent federal legislation, there's nothing to stop an athlete from suing next time to say, ‘Well, I want a sixth year. Why am I only getting five?’ ” Said Gilfillan: “They did not foresee, or maybe they did foresee, what the fallout could possibly be, and obviously they're suffering the consequences.” Consequences such as the SEC finding itself at odds with one of its member schools right as football season begins. That’s where things stand, as of Wednesday, for Kiffin’s LSU team — a program that positioned itself to benefit from the court rulings that are plunging the college sports world into chaos.