LSU Players Carry the Cost of Kiffin’s NFL Additions

Lane Kiffin said Monday his LSU leadership committee told him to add former NFL players if they can help the Tigers win.

Tight end Dae’Quan Wright, cut by the Cleveland Browns, and former Notre Dame end Junior Tuihalamaka have already practiced in Baton Rouge. A judge hears the case Thursday. LSU must file a 105-man roster Friday, a day before Clemson.

Kiffin Put the Call on His Leadership Committee

Kiffin told reporters he had been torn about bringing in players this late, even after a court order opened a path. He compared it to an NFL cut week, when new bodies walk in and take work from men who practiced all summer.

So he asked the team’s leadership committee. He said he told them it was their team, and he asked what they wanted if the Tigers were allowed to add the players.

Every one of them was emphatic about, ‘If they can help us win, bring them.’ We understand that we have a team that’s practiced together and worked together all offseason, but this is how it works at the next level, and this is how the real world works.

Lane Kiffin, LSU head coach, Aug. 31 news conference

He added that if a couple of extra veterans never even start, and the move is legal and the players want it, he will take the public hit. Wright and Tuihalamaka practiced with the Tigers this week. Kiffin said the SEC already knew, and that the new conference rule targets the Friday list, not a practice jersey.

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, whose team opens at LSU on Saturday, did not buy the workplace analogy. “It’s embarrassing. I mean, it really is. We have no rules. I mean, it’s a joke. There’s zero rules,” Swinney said.

The NCAA Says These Roster Spots Are Zero-Sum

The people who actually pay are already in the building. A fifth year for a player who took an NFL check still comes out of a finite pile of snaps and revenue-share money. A 105-man roster can hide an extra body. Playing time cannot, and neither can the check pool.

The NCAA said the same thing, in writing, while asking a Kentucky appeals court to unwind another injunction. In a Sept. 1 filing, the association argued that applying the new fifth year backward would scramble rosters that schools had already built and paid. It told the court that roster spots and revenue sharing are zero-sum, and it quoted the U.S. Supreme Court line that when one athlete makes a team, that athlete takes a spot from another.

WHO LOSES IF THE CUTS STICK

• Current backups: Extra veterans at tight end and on the defensive line eat reps that younger Tigers have been taking since winter.
• The pay pool: LSU’s portal class already sits on a payroll that exceeds $40 million, so another veteran is another draw on the same pot.
• High school signees: The SEC’s own statement said a return path for pros would “reduce opportunities for high school and current college athletes.”
• The one-way door: Only 1.4 percent of NCAA football players reach the NFL, which is why a cut with a court order is so eager to come back.

Wake Forest athletic director John Currie put the same math in a text: signing a player out of an NFL camp takes a chance from current college students and from graduating high school players. Kiffin’s committee can still want to win. That does not make the pile any larger.

How the Class of 2022 Landed in Court

The fight started with a rule change, not with Lane Kiffin. On June 23, the NCAA Division I Cabinet unanimously approved an age-based eligibility model that lets athletes compete through a five-year window and kills most waivers except pregnancy, military service and religious missions.

The Cabinet refused to grandfather the high school class of 2022, the group that had just finished four straight seasons under the old four-in-five model. Those athletes got what the old book promised and nothing from the new one. Lawsuits followed in state and federal court, more than 100 outgoing seniors across at least a dozen groups.

The five-year clock starts at enrollment or age 19, whichever comes first, and then runs without a pause for transfers or unused seasons. The new book took effect Aug. 1. For anyone who had already burned four seasons by the end of 2025-26, the extra year existed only if a judge said so.

THE BATON ROUGE CLOCK

1. June 23, 2026: The Division I Cabinet adopts the age-based model and keeps it off the class of 2022.
2. August 19, 2026: Judge William Jorden of Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court grants a temporary restraining order covering 16 football players and 30 athletes in all.
3. August 21, 2026: The 10th Circuit stays a federal class order, leaving state-court TROs as the live path.
4. August 23, 2026: The Browns waive Wright. Agents Drew Rosenhaus and Kyle Lincoln say he has an LSU deal if he clears waivers.
5. August 25, 2026: Wright clears waivers. The Big Ten and SEC pass bans on former pros the same day.
6. August 28, 2026: Jorden amends the TRO to add the SEC and commissioner Greg Sankey, and to block penalties against any school that plays the plaintiffs.
7. August 31, 2026: Kiffin says Wright and Tuihalamaka have practiced. LSU soccer already used the same order, with Jazmin Ferguson and Jocelyn Ollivierre entering against Arizona in the 21st minute.

The Baton Rouge case has since grown past 40 athletes. NCAA vice president for external affairs Tim Buckley said courts that restore ineligible athletes have failed to see the destabilizing effect. The association has not been able to make that argument stick in Louisiana.

A Judge Froze the SEC Ban Before Kickoff

Once Wright’s Browns deal died, the Power 4 moved as a bloc. The Big Ten voted first on Aug. 25. The SEC followed the same day after presidents, chancellors and athletic directors met in Birmingham. The Big 12 went on Aug. 26. The ACC board finished the set on Aug. 27.

The SEC’s public line was that college athletes, not former professional athletes, sit at the heart of the league, and that anyone who signs a pro contract should not come back. LSU was the school the rule was written to stop. One account of the vote said the rest of the league was unanimous.

POWER 4 BANS ON FORMER PROS

Jorden’s amended order, entered Friday, Aug. 28, said the SEC could not levy those penalties on the plaintiffs, on any member school or coach they play for, or on any school that has to face them. Attorney Darren Heitner said the league told the players’ lawyers it would comply with court orders in Louisiana. The conference also said it would defend its rights at Thursday’s hearing.

Kiffin said LSU talks to the SEC daily and will follow whatever rule survives. Practice is legal under the current text. The Friday 105-man list is the line. If the injunction fails, he said, the Tigers will drop the players.

Ole Miss Players Have Heard This Voice Before

Kiffin has used “the players wanted this” before, and the last locker room answered him in public. After he left Ole Miss for LSU last December, he wrote that the Rebels had asked athletic director Keith Carter to let him keep coaching through the College Football Playoff. Carter denied the request.

Starting center Brycen Sanders, who sat on Ole Miss’s leadership council, quoted the line and wrote, “I think everyone that was in that room would disagree.” Linebacker Suntarine Perkins added that it was not the message Kiffin delivered in the meeting room, and that everyone in there could vouch. Offensive linemen Paris Wilkins and Jayden Williams backed Sanders.

Carter later said players were worried about losing their position coaches, not begging Kiffin to stay. Kiffin has since said he regrets how the exit went. That history does not prove his LSU committee is lying. It does mean a coach who speaks for a leadership group is asking to be taken on faith he has already spent.

On Tuesday, Carter said Ole Miss will follow SEC rules, including the pro ban, while still hunting fifth-year players who never signed a professional contract. That is the split inside the same league: an extra year for someone who stayed in school is one fight. An extra year for someone who already took an NFL check is another.

Wright, Harris and a Notre Dame End Who Never Signed

The three names attached to LSU are not the same case, which is why the conference rule and the court order keep sliding past each other. Wright is the test of the one-way door. Tuihalamaka may never have walked through it.

THE LSU TARGETS

Wright went through the combine, signed in Philadelphia, was released Aug. 11, landed in Cleveland, and was on the field for preseason warmups against Buffalo. To use the Louisiana order, plaintiffs’ lawyers have said a player must end the pro contract and pay back what he earned. The NFL has also said a player who leaves now will not be allowed back this season.

Tuihalamaka is the cleaner file. He never signed. The Power 4 texts aim at drafts, contracts and rosters. A Notre Dame end with a court order and no pro deal is a fifth-year transfer of the old kind, wearing the new fight’s clothes. Harris sits in between: a Saints signature, a medical stall, a release, then a reunion with the coach he had at Ole Miss.

Former Utah corner Blake Cotton is in the same Baton Rouge filing as a player with interest in a Division I school in Louisiana. Former LSU basketball and soccer athletes are already in the case. Men’s basketball has been recruiting RJ Luis Jr., who signed two-way NBA paper and played in Celtics preseason; attorney Tony Clayton won him a separate injunction.

The 105-Man List Comes a Day After Court

Thursday’s hearing in Baton Rouge is the hinge. Jorden can convert the TRO into a preliminary injunction that carries the plaintiffs through the season, or he can let the short-term order die. The SEC says it will show up and defend a voluntary association’s right to set membership rules. LSU has to lock the 105 names Friday.

Kiffin said the additions are not a Week 1 plan. He talked about having them ready by Week 2, 3 or 4, the way NFL clubs plug bodies in September and play them in October. New football players also need a five-day acclimatization period before full pads, which is a quiet problem if the court does not speak until Thursday afternoon and Clemson kicks at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Practice: Wright and Tuihalamaka have practiced; Kiffin said that does not break the SEC rule on its current text.
• The shield: Jorden’s amended order blocks the 50% coach ban and the 50% budget fine against any school that plays these plaintiffs while the TRO holds.
• The opener: No. 11 LSU hosts Clemson on Sept. 5, with the roster due the day before.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Friday’s 105: Whether Wright, Harris and Tuihalamaka are on the list still depends on Thursday.
• Appeal: Even a win for the players can move to a Louisiana appellate court, or to a federal fight the SEC has flagged.
• Pyburn: The Chiefs claim on Aug. 31 likely ends his college return unless Kansas City cuts him before the list is due.

Kiffin said he has lived in chaos a long time and that chaos is fine if it stays controlled. The control now sits with a state judge, not with a leadership committee. If the Tigers add the veterans, the extra year will be paid for by the players who never left.