Everyone settle down. They're not running off a charter member of the SEC.
Yet, anyway.
The SEC presidents and chancellors are mad and embarrassed, and they'll vote Thursday to expel LSU from the league. While it sounds foreboding, but here's the likely punishment for the suddenly rogue university:
LSU coach Lane Kiffin will be suspended multiple games, and the university will be hit with a massive fine. They'll also be told ― in a legal and unambiguous way ― that one more instance of flouting league rules will result in their expulsion from the SEC.
From Kiffin, to athletic director Verge Ausberry,
to president Wade Rousse, everyone is going to pay for what the SEC considers a “lack of institutional control.”
“There will be no doubt about what will happen if this continues,” an SEC source told USA TODAY Sports.
Make no mistake, now is not the time for LSU or its acolytes — this means you, Gov. — to plead innocence or demand justice. Take your medicine, and walk away.
Take Kiffin’s suspension, take the fine and the humbling public paddling and declare fealty to all things SEC. Or not, and go join the Big 12 or hook up with a streamer as an independent.
Because the Big Ten wants nothing to do with this nonsense. Nor does the ACC.
ESPN loves this drama for TV ratings, but make no mistake who has the leverage in that relationship. And it’s not ESPN.
If ESPN decides the expulsion of LSU means the SEC has changed the dynamics of the media rights deal and they want out, the SEC will saunter over to Amazon and get more cash. The SEC controls that relationship, and will tell ESPN who is part of its 16-team (or 15-team) league.
If LSU continues this nonsense, and Kiffin continues to act like a petulant teen, LSU is out and North Carolina is in and away they go to begin 2027. LSU didn’t make the SEC, the conference and its massive growth since the late 1990s — of which LSU was part — made not just LSU, but everyone in the conference.
There's a reason Texas and Oklahoma, the two biggest chess pieces on the expansion board, sprinted to the SEC over the Big Ten when they had the opportunity. It's the all for one mantra within the league; no team is bigger than any other.
Everyone abides by the same rules, everyone profits evenly ― to the dime ― from the riches.
LSU overplayed its hand because it got caught up in the Kiffin hurricane, and started thinking and acting like him. You know, the same nonsense he instigated when with the NFL's Raiders, and Tennessee and USC and Alabama and Ole Miss.
It's the world according to Kiffin, absorbed through osmosis.
Rousse agreed to SEC schools not adding players who signed NFL contracts, but not to strict penalties for those schools who did. He could’ve stopped this from Day 1 by telling Kiffin and Ausberry that LSU would not accept players who signed NFL deals.
Ausberry could’ve told Kiffin the same, and made it clear to the LSU community that the SEC supersedes all, and nothing — not a district attorney, nor a judge, nor public opinion — would change anything.
Then there’s Kiffin, who allegedly encouraged players who had signed NFL contracts and were participating in NFL camps, to sue the NCAA for eligibility, then had those players practicing with the team while awaiting approval from the SEC.
Then, after the players won the case with a local East Baton Rouge parish judge and LSU saved face, Kiffin doubled down during a halftime interview of the Clemson game, saying of LSU’s 31-3 lead: “Imagine if we had pro players.”
He did so knowing SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the presidents of the league were publicly embarrassed by his and LSU’s antics of the past two weeks. Knowing they were watching the game.
And did it, anyway.
It took all of three days for the SEC to schedule a meeting for Thursday to decide the fate of LSU — a fate that nearly was sealed after the local judge ruled in favor of players seeking eligibility, and enjoined LSU in the ruling.
An SEC source told USA TODAY Sports the “cold gumbo” moment on the courthouse steps after the hearing — when an LSU acolyte said the SEC and Sankey were served cold gumbo — was the last straw.
Then Kiffin made it worse during the Clemson game, thumbing his nose at the entire process to make a point.
This is the Kiffin hurricane, everyone. LSU simply got caught up in it.
Now it's time to take your medicine ― or take a hike.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: LSU must take its SEC punishment. Or take a hike | Opinion
