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Louisiana Judge William Jorden on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the NCAA and SEC from enforcing eligibility rules against players who signed NFL contracts over the summer but now want to play college football at LSU. Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris are among more than 40 player-plaintiffs in Pyburn v. NCAA, one of many cases involving athletes who began college play in 2022–23, completed four years of NCAA eligibility and, in some instances, signed with professional teams after leaving college. The ruling, for now at least, clears the legal path for Wright and Harris to play for LSU in its matchup against Clemson on Saturday night. Jorden’s order also prohibits LSU from taking adverse action against the players, a point that could become significant if the SEC or NCAA moves to punish LSU for playing ineligible players. The SEC plans to appeal Jorden’s ruling, and the conference has separately sued LSU in federal court. But with only hours remaining before Saturday’s LSU game against Clemson, there is a good chance that neither a state appellate court nor a federal court will issue a decision on Friday altering the players’ eligibility. The players maintain that when the NCAA adopted a new eligibility framework that permits some athletes to compete for up to five seasons, they should have benefited from the change. If they could play an additional season, they could earn potentially millions of dollars in NIL payments and revenue sharing, as well as further develop their athletic skills in hopes of starting or, in some instances, resuming professional careers in 2027. The NCAA denied this group eligibility in part because, by that point in the summer, recruits had already selected schools in reliance on expected roster spots and, in some instances, anticipated playing opportunities. Courts have ruled variously in these cases, with some judges ruling for the players and others siding with the NCAA. Earlier Thursday, the SEC sued LSU, head football coach Lane Kiffin and others in federal court in Alabama. The SEC accuses LSU and Kiffin of recruiting players they knew to be ineligible because they had already completed college and, in some cases, turned professional. The SEC argues that the First Amendment protects both the right to associate and the right not to associate, and that member schools should not be compelled to compete against an institution that the conference believes is violating SEC eligibility rules by allowing athletes to play who previously signed NFL contracts and participated in NFL activities. The SEC has petitioned U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon to issue an injunction that would block LSU from engaging in “conduct that is contrary to the conference’s purpose and mission.” Axon would likely clarify whether such “conduct” includes recruiting and placing on the roster players whom the SEC deems ineligible. This means there is a possibility of conflicting injunctions: a state-court injunction that makes a group of players eligible to play at LSU and blocks LSU from taking adverse action against those players, and a federa one that blocks LSU from making those players eligible or playing them. It is possible that Judge Axon could choose to stay or defer aspects of the federal case while the state-court litigation continues. Federal courts sometimes decline to intervene when parallel state proceedings raise overlapping issues, though whether any abstention doctrine applies here would depend on how Axon structures an injunction. There are circumstances in which a federal court will conclude that there is no conflict or will rule even when doing so might create a conflict. To that point, Axon might reason that the two cases involve related but fundamentally different issues. Pyburn v. NCAA was brought by athletes who seek to play despite their ineligibility, and the case is based on state law. SEC v. LSU was brought by a conference seeking to block a member school from recruiting and playing ineligible athletes, and it is based on U.S. constitutional issues. If the two cases lead to conflicting injunctions, the parties would petition the courts to clarify how they can comply with the orders and avoid being held in contempt. For example, LSU might place the players on the football roster but not play them. Either court might conclude that approach fails to satisfy its order. But the logic would be that no court can order a team to play an athlete; by placing the athletes on the roster, LSU would comply with the state order, while not playing them would comply with at least the spirit of the federal order. Will that conflict happen? Anything is possible these days in college sports and the law.