LSU’s Lane Kiffin tests the NCAA’s limits, creating college football firestorm

Louisiana State University head coach Lane Kiffin quickly became the face of what many argue is wrong with modern college sports as the college football season approached this summer.

The 51-year-old expert recruiter and protégé of University of Alabama legend Nick Saban had ditched his former playoff-bound school Ole Miss for an in-conference rival.

He was boasting about LSU’s deep name, image and likeness (NIL) budget, was luring elite student-athletes to Baton Rouge and was flirting with adding NFL rookies who had been cut by their professional teams to LSU’s roster.

After LSU was threatened with expulsion from the SEC and sued by the league over Kiffin’s offseason recruiting methods, the coach backed off, agreeing last week not to add former pro players to his team.

But a growing number of people around college football are pointing to Kiffin’s tactics as emblematic of what they see as a lack of fairness in college sports.

Kiffin’s bending of the NCAA and SEC’s eligibility rules, these people say, is the result of an intensifying arms race that federal lawmakers are setting their sights on regulating as part of their agenda when they return to the Capitol this week.

“We’re reading all about how Lane Kiffin is a bad actor here, and he’s certainly being painted as such, but it’s a hell of a thing when these coaches are just following court orders. When a [judge] says you can play, I don’t think we’ve ever been in a situation like this,” said Rick Hamilton, an antitrust attorney specializing in student-athlete rights and eligibility. “It’s just common sense. If you know what other [schools] can do and you’re competing against them … this is big business.”

Arguably the hottest debate in college sports today, the controversy at LSU centers on players in the class of 2022 who declared for the NFL in the offseason but did not make pro rosters.

Several of them sued the NCAA over its newly implemented “five seasons in five years” rule, arguing they should be able to take advantage of the rule retroactively and return to college competition.

Three players who Kiffin had been eyeing sued in Louisiana this summer and won, clearing the way for them to be legally added to rosters of college teams in the state.

Kiffin contended the players were fair game to recruit under the NCAA’s and Southeastern Conference’s guidelines and warned if LSU did not seek to add them, another school would.

“The players chose us. A lot of people were recruiting them, a lot of people were offering them a lot of money,” Kiffin said on a recent episode of Pat McAfee’s ESPN program. “So, we were happy, but we realize this [pushback] was going to come with it.”

Critics have blasted the LSU coach, arguing he is taking advantage of the NCAA’s recent struggles to enforce its eligibility rules, something the association has sought the help of Congress in strengthening.

If left unchecked, experts and observers say, more coaches are likely to continue taking spots away from currently enrolled students who, in many cases, have been with the team for years to free space for players with some professional experience.

“I don’t think he’s going to be the last coach to do this. Because of where we are in college sports with NIL and the loose transfer rules, coaches are under so much pressure now to build their rosters and find talent wherever they can,” said Jim Johnson, a sports business expert and attorney. “For players, coaches, scouts and everyone involved, the business of college sports is no longer in the back of their minds, it’s driving the decisionmaking.”

Kiffin seems to be relishing the controversy his recruiting methods have sparked.

During a brief television interview after the Tigers built a sizable first-half lead against Clemson University in Week 1, the LSU coach quipped, “Imagine if we were allowed to have the NFL players,” as he ran into a tunnel leading to the team’s locker room.

A leaked video from the LSU locker room minutes later caught him using outside chatter around the program to motivate his players, screaming, “The whole f‑‑‑ing world hates you! So you get a chance to show the world go f‑‑‑ yourself!”

Those comments led the Southeastern Conference to amend its lawsuit days later, making reference to Kiffin’s quote and arguing he was showing a reckless disregard for the integrity of college sports.

“He’s having fun with it. He thinks this is entertaining,” said college football pundit Paul Finebaum, who earlier this year considered a run for Senate in Alabama, during an episode of his talk show this week. “Maybe I’m too serious about following rules, but I don’t find any humor in Lane Kiffin, and I don’t know anybody outside of Louisiana that does.”

Inside Louisiana, Kiffin and his tactics have sturdy support, including from some who represent the state on Capitol Hill.

“LSU hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s called a court of law,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters last week. “Now whether you agree with what LSU did or not, we did the right thing by going to court. And we’re going to follow the law, but they’re [the Southeastern Conference] not going to do anything if I have something to say about it.”

The controversy comes at a tense time for the conference and NCAA, which are among the groups that in recent months have spent upwards of $30 million lobbying Congress to pass the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan bill that would grant the governing body antitrust protection and shield it from litigation around issues like eligibility, NIL and the transfer portal.

Kiffin’s gambit this offseason has certainly caused a public relations headache for the NCAA and the conference, most observers agree, but some predict the saga could end up being a catalyst for necessary change in college sports.

“It’s hard to know what the rules are in college football specifically anymore. It feels like they’re being created more by judges than by the NCAA or conferences,” said Kevin Paule, another sports business attorney. “This definitely helps the supporters of the Senate bill. They can more easily make the argument ‘look at this, we are trying to do something about this and the bill would either make these situations disappear or be far less likely in the future.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly investigating the Los Angeles Clippers over a scheme to funnel money through sponsors and other team business partners to star player Kawhi Leonard to circumvent the NBA salary cap. The probe, first reported by The New York Times, comes after the league handed down sanctions against the team, docking it five draft picks and banning billionaire owner Steve Ballmer from team activities for a year. It was unclear as of last week whether Ballmer or Leonard specifically are potential targets of the DOJ’s criminal probe.

President Trump said in a Truth Social post his address at the Republican midterm convention on Wednesday “beat” the NFL on opening night in terms of audience. It was a claim that came with no reference to specific viewership or social media engagement numbers. The president’s address was carried in full by only a few cable channels, while national broadcast network NBC has not publicized ratings from the Seahawks vs. Patriots game. A typical audience for an NFL game in primetime comes in the tens of millions in terms of average viewership.

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R) published a new ad last week showing him swinging a baseball bat in a batting cage while listing off his policy prerogatives. The former 2024 GOP presidential candidate and Trump ally was hit with some jeers on social media and criticism from hitting coaches over his technique at the plate.

Jocks on the Hill: Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.)

Rep. Morgan McGarvey, the only Democrat in the Kentucky congressional delegation, answered some sports questions for The Hill.

“Man … my favorite playing was baseball. I only played through Little League, but I enjoyed it.”

“I root for teams that when I was a kid weren’t rivals and are now rivals. So when I was growing up the [St. Louis] Cardinals had their Triple A affiliate in Louisville. So we had the Red Birds, we went to those games all the times and saw all the Cardinals come up. But Cincinnati is about an hour and a half from Louisville. So I would go with my grandfather up to see the Reds. It was the first pro team I ever got to see. Plus, anyone who grew up in South roots for the Braves because they were on TV.”

Is there an athlete you really admired growing up?

“You know, I really liked Greg Maddux. He was really dominant. And I liked the fact he was such a student of the game and he looked like your English professor and then would get up there and dominate you.”

Hate is a strong word, but is there a team you love to root against?

“Everybody in Kentucky roots against Duke.”

The legendary NHL coach and ESPN hockey commentator Barry Melrose died last week after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. One of the outlet’s lead hockey reporters, Greg Wyshynski, penned a touching tribute to Melrose, writing that for many fans, he simply “was hockey.”

The investigative news outlet ProPublica published a deeply reported piece examining the Dominican Republic’s production of more MLB players than any country outside the U.S. It found an essentially unregulated industry that uses “enormous sums promised to poor families” and reported that moneylenders exploit players and their families “by offering loans at exorbitant interest rates” and then finding ways “to scam them.”

Tennis at 3 in the morning? Really? The Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Gay takes the U.S. Open to task in this new piece , writing it’s another example of an instance where “this glorious sport can’t get out of its own way.”