At some point over the weekend, the Tennessee REDACTED message board stopped having an LSU thread and became a state legislature.

Actually, that is unfair to state legislatures.

They usually require more than one room.

REDACTED.com now has three separate LSU threads.

Not three pages.

Three threads.

• One to discuss the sanctions LSU could face.
• One to determine whether LSU can be removed from the SEC.
• And one to decide who replaces LSU after the board removes them.

LSU has not actually been removed from the conference.

This technicality did not delay the succession committee.

In roughly the amount of time normal people spend deciding whether to order wings or nachos, the Tennessee internet had opened an enforcement action, convened an appellate court and begun interviewing replacement institutions.

This is what institutional maturity looks like.

Thread One: The Sanctions Department Opens for Business

The first thread began almost responsibly.

A screenshot of the SEC’s reported penalty structure started circulating: head-coach suspensions, enormous financial penalties and loss of voting privileges for schools that violate the conference’s professional-sports rule.

That was enough.

Within minutes, REDACTED had LSU’s private-equity partner on the phone, had calculated a possible eight-figure financial hit and was trying to determine whether Baton Rouge could still vote on conference business after being placed under Tennessee internet receivership.

I-75Exit81, whose freight-dispatch background has somehow qualified him to audit athletic-department balance sheets, wanted to know what the return on investment looked like after somebody parked a $30-to-$50 million fine on the loading dock.

SectionQ was less interested in finance.

He wanted voting rights.

Take them.

Conference title game?

Take that too.

At one point the thread wandered into whether the College Football Playoff could still take LSU if the SEC did not want them there.

Somebody confidently invoked the NCAA.

Somebody else immediately pointed out that the NCAA does not run the College Football Playoff.

REDACTED issued a correction and continued the execution.

Facts are important.

They should never interfere with momentum.

Thread Two: REDACTED School of Law, Night Division

The second thread tackled the small matter of whether LSU could actually be punished by the conference while courts were dealing with the player-eligibility issue.

This is where the board became magnificent.

State law.

Conference bylaws.

Contract law.

Voluntary membership organizations.

Self-regulatory organizations.

At one point FDIC, SEC and MI6 were dragged into the discussion like expert witnesses who had accidentally walked into the wrong courthouse.

RockyTopBill tried to explain the distinction between a court protecting an individual player and a conference punishing a member institution for violating conference rules.

That was dangerously close to useful.

Fortunately, somebody saved the thread.

“What’s stopping Jalin Hyatt from being cut by the Giants and coming back to play for us, granted he gets the injunctions necessary? Nothing.”

There it is.

The entire American legal system reduced to roster management.

Why waste time with jurisprudence when you can get a receiver?

College football allowing NFL players to return is an existential threat to competitive integrity.

Unless Tennessee can get Jalin Hyatt back.

Then it is precedent.

GeneralPortalMajors immediately began mentally processing the paperwork.

Waivers.

Injunction.

Flight to Knoxville.

Helmet fitting by Thursday.

The Constitution lives.

Thread Three: LSU Is Gone. Please Select a Replacement.

And then I found the third thread.

This one did not bother with sanctions.

It did not bother with injunctions.

It did not bother with the awkward fact that LSU remains a member of the Southeastern Conference.

The question was essentially:

Fine. When we throw LSU out, who do we get?

That is breathtaking efficiency.

Most legal systems require an accusation, a hearing, evidence, a ruling and an appeal.

REDACTED requires Wi-Fi.

Georgia Tech was floated.

North Carolina came up.

Other schools were kicked around with the casual confidence of men replacing a refrigerator.

ThirdAndMoonshine approached conference realignment the way his people approach a church fish fry:

Who is bringing what?

How far is the drive?

And are they going to act weird when they get here?

PorchVol wanted geography respected.

VolsDeepState88 wanted to know who Sankey had already promised the slot to behind closed doors.

Nobody asked whether the vacancy existed.

That would have been negative thinking.

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So that is where the Tennessee internet stands.

Three threads.

One school.

And an administrative apparatus that now includes the SEC enforcement office, a Louisiana appellate court, the College Football Playoff committee, a private-equity desk and a conference-expansion subcommittee staffed entirely by men posting from their phones.

LSU has been fined.

LSU has been stripped of voting rights.

LSU has been expelled.

LSU has been replaced.

None of these things have actually happened.

But the paperwork is apparently complete.

If a fourth LSU thread appears tonight, I assume it will concern liquidation of the Baton Rouge equipment room and the equitable distribution of shoulder pads among the remaining member institutions.

And somewhere, somebody will ask the only question that matters:

Can Jalin Hyatt still get here by Saturday?

According to REDACTED jurisprudence:

Nothing is stopping us.