National Sports

SEC considering expelling LSU over NFL player flap

Leaders of the Southeastern Conference will meet today to discuss whether to take the extraordinary step of kicking LSU out of the league in the wake of an ugly feud over first-year coach Lane Kiffin’s now-abandoned effort to field players who signed contracts with NFL teams as undrafted rookies earlier this year.

Hours after word of the meeting became public, an LSU official familiar with the decision said the Tigers had finished filling out the final 105-man roster for this season and that no players who spent time with NFL teams will be on it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

There was no immediate response from the SEC, which amended the federal lawsuit it filed against LSU last week and asked the judge to bar the school from taking action to block or interfere with the meeting of SEC member university presidents and chancellors. A hearing was possible Wednesday.

A vote of at least two-thirds of the conference’s top leaders would be needed to expel LSU, a founding member of the nearly century-old conference in 1933. LSU has a host of powerhouse athletics programs and has won three of the SEC’s 25 AP national championships in football alone.

A declaration that Commissioner Greg Sankey included with the league’s legal filing made the planned meeting sound like more than posturing; Sankey noted that school presidents met to discuss LSU last Friday, a day after a marathon court hearing in which he took the stand to insist the league has the right to enforce its own rules.

“The consensus … was and continues to be that LSU’s continued membership in the conference would be inconsistent with the publicly stated values and principles of the conference and its remaining member institutions,” even if LSU doesn’t put the former NFL players on its roster, the commissioner said.

The SEC has a long-established rule forbidding teams from bringing players with major professional experience onto their rosters. In recent weeks, the conference announced updated enforcement provisions to that rule, stating that the commissioner had the power to suspend coaches, fine universities up to half of a sport’s budget and restrict a member university’s voting privileges on conference matters.

But last Thursday, a judge in Baton Rouge barred the league from enforcing any rules regarding former pros -- a decision celebrated heartily by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and the state attorney general, Liz Murrill, who’d filed a brief in the case on behalf of the athletes.

Murrill called the SEC’s lawsuit “legal garbage” shortly after it was filed last week. Now the SEC is listing Murrill as a defendant in its federal lawsuit.

Two of the players, Zxavian Harris and Dae’Quan Wright, have been participating in team activities, but were not placed on the roster in advance of l Saturday’s 51-10, season-opening victory over Clemson. Still, two roster spots were left open through the weekend until LSU said it had finalized the roster without Harris and Wright.