LSU’s Lane Kiffin defends adding NFL castoffs to roster after championship rival says it’s ‘morally wrong’

Louisiana State is leaning into a major potential talent pool: NFL castoffs.

Former Cleveland Browns and Philadelphia Eagles tight end Dae’Quan Wright participated in a walk-through practice conducted by first-year LSU coach Lane Kiffin on Monday for the 11th-ranked Tigers as they prepare to host Clemson on Saturday in Baton Rouge.

Whether Wright or others who spent part of this offseason with NFL clubs — defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and defensive back Blake Cotton — ever suit up for LSU remains in doubt because of litigation. Like other power leagues, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) last week passed a rule barring pro players from returning to the league and it was promptly put on hold by a Texas judge.

The SEC’s rule goes beyond the one adopted earlier in the day by the Big Ten, which only included football in its decision and is expected address other sports later.

Kiffin wasn’t about to allow any kind of criticism stop him from embracing the opportunity to bring in players like Wright, who played for him at Mississippi last season.

‘I feel like my decisions should always be made in the best interest of the players that sit in this team room and not for my reputation, and how my decisions play in national media and other fan bases. I’ve never been that way and that could be wrong,’ he said.

Wright was cut by the Eagles, but is hoping to be allowed to return to college at LSU

Kiffin said that if college players are being paid like professionals, he is willing to make the case that college teams should not hesitate to seize opportunities to make late roster additions in much the same way NFL teams do. He also said he met with LSU team leaders about whether to welcome recent pros back to college just days before a season-opener.

‘Every one of them was emphatic about, ‘If they can help us win, bring ’em,’ Kiffin said. ‘That made me feel a little better.’

‘This is how it works at the next level,’ Kiffin added. ‘This is how the real world works.’

Kiffin said the SEC knows that Wright — as star tight end for Kiffin at Ole Miss last season — had joined LSU at least for practice. His first day on the field was Monday, meaning he would not be permitted to play against Clemson under the NCAA’s mandated seven-day ‘aclimitization protocol.’

However, former Notre Dame defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka, who did not sign with an NFL team but is nonetheless suing for a fifth year of NCAA eligibility, started practicing earlier.

Defensive back Blake Cotton works out at Utah’s Pro Day months before joining LSU 

Defensive end Jack Pyburn, who spent training camp with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after playing for LSU last season, was among the players suing the NCAA and was expected to come back to the Tigers after he was cut. Instead, he was claimed off of waivers on Monday by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Nearly 400 athletes have sued the NCAA and other defendants, seeking additional eligibility and claiming the organization’s 5-in-5 rule approved in June is unfair because it excludes members of the high school Class of 2022. More than 30 lawsuits, several of them in federal court, are in different stages of litigation. Some include a handful athletes who signed professional contracts, which prompted every Power Four conference to ban pros from returning to college – leading to even more court filings.

University presidents around the conference have expressed ‘a high level of frustration’ with LSU since Friday, when a Louisiana judge included the SEC in his temporary restraining order against the NCAA, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity because those discussions were not public. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Baton Rouge.

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, who previously worked on the same staff with Kiffin at Southern California, echoed those sentiments.

‘Our presidents got this right in the Southeastern Conference,’ Sarkisian said. ‘The fact that somebody out there is going to take a player off an NFL roster and tell somebody who’s been (on their college team) for nine months go kick rocks? That doesn’t sit well with me. I think that is wrong; that is morally wrong.’

Sarkisian, who previously worked on the same staff with Kiffin at USC, described the situation in stark terms: ‘That doesn’t sit well with me. I think that is wrong; that is morally wrong.’

Kiffin noted that LSU hasn’t broken any conference rules – yet. Conference teams have to submit their final 2026 rosters the day before their season openers, which for most SEC teams is Friday.

‘We’ll wait until this week to see if there’s any more guidance’ from the courts, Kiffin said, discounting whether the ‘chaos’ surrounding LSU at the moment might servse as a distraction to him or his team.

‘I’ve lived with chaos for a long time,’ Kiffin said, noting that Ole Miss won the last five games he coached there while speculation swirled around whether and when he might leave to coach elsewhere.

‘We’re going to have chaos, but we’re going to have controlled chaos and our team is going to understand why we do what we do,’ Kiffin added. ‘It doesn’t matter if national media doesn’t understand, or other fan bases.’

New artwork has gone up in the lobby of LSU’s Football Operations Center. It shows the back of an LSU football player standing in the shadows of a tunnel entering a stadium. It states: ‘If you want to win at the highest level, you have to become a villain in someone else’s story.’

And it’s that ‘villain’ identity that is already coming to define the Tigers’ 2026 season.

‘He’s the biggest villain I think the sport has had in modern time,’ ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum told The New York Post. ‘It is a great story on many levels, and the person happiest with that is Lane Kiffin. It’s who he is. I think he’s a great coach, but he’s a better puppeteer and entertainer.

‘People go, well, what’s the big deal, if they don’t follow college football. The big deal is that no one has ever done what he did last season. He walked out on a team that had a chance to win the national championship. Quite frankly, only Lane Kiffin could do that. You can tell me, top 30 coaches in America, would anyone else have done it, no, and he did it, and he got away with it.’

Zxavian Harris of the Mississippi Rebels speaks at the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine back in February. Now he’s followed Kiffin to LSU, where he hopes to play college ball once again

And it’s not just LSU football with an interest in the pros.

The SEC rule, which also applies to players signed by the NBA G League, will impact players like R.J. Luis Jr.. On Monday, the former St. John’s star won a court ruling that allowed him to sign with Will Wade’s basketball program at LSU despite having briefly been under contract with the Jazz and Celtics of the NBA.

Kiffin suggested in a news conference Monday that if LSU didn’t take these newly eligible players, other teams certainly would. Now, nobody can – at least not among the 34 teams that make up the two biggest leagues in college and play an outsize role in spearheading policy across the industry.

There was no immediate comment from LSU.

‘Over 100 athletes in multiple sports were cleared and said you could go play. That’s a court order,’ Kiffin said earlier Tuesday on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ on ESPN. ‘If you think back on all the different court orders of great players that were granted — whether that’s Diego Pavia or, now, Trinidad (Chambliss) that were allowed to play a sixth year, we followed all court orders. I think you get into a really interesting situation as a conference if you’re now saying, `Well, we’re not going to follow this court order.’

The Big Ten’s penalties for violating its rule include a half-season suspension for the head coach and a fine for the school. The SEC did not immediately divulge its penalties, though commissioner Greg Sankey is expected to have wide latitude in figuring out punishment.

Zxavian Harris played for Kiffin at Ole Miss and is now back in school after whiffing on the NFL

The other Power Four leagues, the Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences, are expected to discuss the issue Wednesday.

‘I don’t think anybody in our league likes the idea of taking away opportunities from existing college students and graduating high school players, which is exactly what is happening when a school signs a player out of an NFL camp to their team,’ Wake Forest athletic director John Currie wrote in a text message to The Associated Press.

The leagues and NCAA are using the eligibility crisis as a selling point for the Protect College Sports Act, a bill in the Senate that would give the NCAA some protection against the sort of lawsuits that are upending college athletics.

But that bill is weeks away from a vote. Football season starts Saturday, with the featured game taking place in Ireland, where TCU faces North Carolina.

‘It’s a rudderless ship right now,’ TCU coach Sonny Dykes said. ‘I mean, I don’t know who’s in charge of football anymore.’

Duke coach Manny Diaz said the Power Four conferences need to present a unified front.

‘You wouldn’t run any other type of corporation, organization, anything else, the way we’re being run right now,’ he said. ‘And so I hope the leagues do step up because somebody has to right now, because when there’s a vacuum, this is what you see.’