The SEC has taken a page out of the Big 12 playbook.
Displeased with unfavorable state-court rulings, the conferences turned to federal court. For the Big 12, a federal lawsuit prompted Texas Tech to abandon a plan to play quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who had won an injunction against an NCAA-imposed gambling suspension. For the SEC, the lawsuit against LSU, coach Lane Kiffin, and others has a goal of keeping LSU from adding players who have been on NFL 90-man rosters.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Via Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports, the complaint alleges that LSU and Kiffin “waged a deliberate and coordinated campaign to recruit professional athletes to play football for LSU during the 2026-27 season, including players who had signed NFL contracts with the Cleveland Browns, New Orleans Saints, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.”
The move comes on the same day a pending state-court lawsuit had returned to court on the question of whether a temporary restraining order allowing LSU to add the former NFL players would proceed. It serves only to add to the current state of college-football chaos, which surely will be leveraged by the powers-that-be into renewed efforts to pass the Protect College Sports Act.