More From the LSU / NFL Eligibility Meltdown
If this is your first stop in the investigation, LSU and the Tennessee internet have been busy.
At 10:18 Saturday morning, the news landed:
The SEC had told attorneys it would comply with applicable court orders allowing certain former NFL players to return to college football.
By 10:21 A. M., the Tennessee message board had fired Greg Sankey.
He gone.
Three minutes.
That is leadership.
The actual legal mess is narrower than the internet made it sound. Courts have temporarily blocked the SEC from enforcing its new prohibition against specific players covered by the orders, and LSU is positioned to add former NFL players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris while the litigation keeps moving.
But four inches isn’t much until you slap that bad boy on a map and suddenly you’ve got 200 miles of hog.
Same principle here.
A temporary court order in Louisiana became, within minutes, the collapse of the Southeastern Conference, the destruction of amateur athletics, the emasculation of Greg Sankey, the Big 10 was running circles around Sankey, the resurrection of Mike Slive and a possible AAA affiliate agreement with the Cleveland Browns (Haslam).
The REDACTED message boarders were ready.
Seven pages later, the original court order would be the least important document in the thread.
OldBullsGapVol: “Weak.”
That was essentially the opening statement.
No legal analysis. Just one word.
No discussion of temporary restraining orders.
A one-word performance review delivered like somebody had found Sankey cowering behind the water heater.
Then came the board’s publisher, who pointed out the absurd optics: former NFL players who have been in rookie mini-camps and preseason games can now potentially wind up on SEC rosters.
His conclusion was that the SEC was becoming the AAA baseball league of the NFL.
That did it.
ThirdAndChavis: “Maybe we can start doing call-ups and rehab assignments.”
Honestly, this has possibilities.
Knoxville Smokies Night at Neyland.
$2 hot dogs and bobble-heads.
A rehabbing Bengals linebacker gets 18 snaps against Vanderbilt before returning to Cincinnati.
Lane Kiffin’s recruiting coordinator has already stopped answering the phone because the poor bastard now apparently has to scout the waiver wire.
Sankey Is Taken Into Custody
The thread then moved from criticism to regime change.
“It’s time for Sankey to step down.”
“No, it’s time for him to be fired.”
“What is the process to remove him?”
One poster wanted to know if they could ‘Schiano’ his weak ass.
We had progressed from a temporary restraining order (TRO) to researching the SEC commissioner removal process before most people had finished their second cup of coffee.
OldBullsGapVol returned to explain that Sankey had been repeatedly shoved into lockers by the Big Ten, had failed to negotiate properly, had surrendered the conference’s position and generally had not made a good decision in years.
Old Bulls Gap was not commenting anymore.
He was building the impeachment spreadsheet.
By page four, the thread had begun eating its own.
One poster suggested everybody calm down and actually read the court order.
This was treated as an act of aggression.
ThirdAndChavis: “Here comes Harvard with the PDF.”
BlueTick88: “You could hand some of y’all the ruling in 72-point font and you’d still blame Sankey for the margins.”
Cromptons3rdRead: “You people would fire Jesus after a 10-2 season.”
BeefeVol88: “Jesus wouldn’t let LSU sign a 25-year-old linebacker.”
That concluded the ecumenical portion of the discussion.
By page five, nobody was arguing about the court order anymore. They were arguing about whether the other people arguing about the court order were stupid.
This was progress.
Someone posted a photograph of a lonely cuckold hotel chair wedged between a bed and some curtains.
“Sankey’s chair.”
No further explanation was necessary.
Another demanded a Mike Slive hologram.
The counterargument — that Slive was perhaps not a flawless deity sent down from Birmingham to protect amateurism — was received about as warmly as a vegan chili recipe at a deer camp.
Then LSU Went Back on Trial
Yesterday, the Tennessee REDACTED board wanted LSU thrown out of the conference.
Today it briefly considered firing Sankey first, then letting his replacement throw LSU out of the conference.
Procedural improvement.
LSU’s offense, according to the board, was no longer merely recruiting players whose eligibility had been restored by court order.
LSU was making a mockery of college athletics.
Lane Kiffin had become the suspected mastermind behind a legal amphibious assault on the conference.
One poster essentially argued that LSU had already contacted everybody with an NFL transaction history and had contracts waiting behind the scenes.
No evidence was presented.
Evidence was not necessary.
Lane Kiffin exists.
That was enough for probable cause.
REDACTED’s evidentiary standard for Lane Kiffin remains refreshingly simple: if something is legal, sleazy, technically permitted and pisses off Tennessee, Lane probably has fingerprints on it.
FranklinVawl: “That sonofabitch could find a loophole in a stop sign.”
BlueTick88: “He doesn’t read the rules. He waits for the rules to get tired.”
Someone asked whether Kiffin had actually done anything illegal.
This was an unserious question.
He left Knoxville in 2010.
REDACTED has been operating under continuing jurisdiction ever since.
Lane could pull three nuns from a burning school bus and half the board would immediately ask who bought the gasoline.
The other half would want to know whether the bus had entered the transfer portal.
And LSU did give everyone a little extra gasoline. The school was part of the SEC’s original 16-0 vote on the rule, then abstained from the later vote approving penalties.
As one board attorney summarized it:
“So he was for it until he was against it.”
Constitutional law has rarely been this efficient.
The Smoke Wagon
Then attorney Tom Mars entered the conversation from outside the asylum.
His basic message to LSU was simple: yes, the SEC will obey court orders. Go ahead and put the covered players on the roster and see what happens.
He accompanied this with the appropriate Western metaphor:
“Go ahead, skin it! Skin that smoke wagon and see what happens.”
That is where we are now.
The SEC says it will obey the court.
LSU appears prepared to test exactly how much protection that order provides.
Lane Kiffin is standing nearby with the expression of a man who has just discovered a loophole at Bass Pro.
Somewhere in Baton Rouge, Kiffin is probably reading the SEC rulebook upside down because that’s where the loopholes are.
Greg Sankey is still commissioner, although REDACTED has requested his badge, gun and conference parking pass.
And OldBullsGapVol remains at his desk, drafting the transition plan.
By kickoff we should have a new commissioner, LSU under federal occupation and three former NFL players on Tennessee’s defensive line who eat barbed wire.
College football is back.
Previously in the LSU Investigation
Tennessee Internet Demands LSU Be Removed From SEC; FinCEN Standing By
Character file: Old Bulls Gap Vol Predicts Tennessee May Be Good—Unless It Isn’t
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