The SEC needed somebody to say enough by is enough of this shit.
Donde Plowman just did it.
REDACTED heard a starter pistol.
Plowman, Tennessee’s chancellor is also president of the SEC’s executive committee, and this week she made the conference position on former pros returning to college about as subtle as a tire iron on a tailgate.
The league, she said, is prepared to defend its rules. The presidents and chancellors are united. This is not a rule they intend to budge on.
She gave the Tennessee Message Boarders the line it had been waiting for:
“Enough is enough.”
That was when a policy dispute became a leadership cult.
CheckerboardGeneral79 was first man through the door:
“That’s what real leadership looks/sounds like.”
Fifty -seven likes in one F5 refresh.
No committee. No white paper. No measured concern about institutional governance.
Next Plowman up.
A few posts later, VolsDeepState88 issued a standing challenge to anybody from Louisiana considering criticism of Tennessee’s chancellor. The original board wording involved “corndog breath” and enough asterisks to qualify as weather.
An unexpected and unrelated Samuel L. Jackson GIF showed up underneath.
Nobody had actually insulted Donde.
This was preventative warning shot.
The real dispute is ugly enough without help. LSU has been adding or pursuing players who signed NFL contracts and then became eligible to return to college through a Louisiana court order. The SEC adopted a rule barring former pros from conference rosters and attached penalties large enough to make an athletic director suddenly remember where the aspirin is. LSU abstained from the penalty vote. A Thursday hearing in Baton Rouge is supposed to decide whether the order blocking SEC enforcement stays in place.
If you have missed the previous week of this nonsense, start with “Three LSU Threads. One Meltdown: REDACTED Sanctions LSU, Expels the Tigers and Starts Shopping for a Replacement.”
That piece began with three separate LSU threads.
We have progressed.
Now the board has a commander.
More Plow. Less Bullshit.
Plowman’s actual argument is narrow. If you signed a professional contract, the SEC says you crossed a line. The conference is not treating this as a general fight over fifth-year eligibility. It is treating professional status as the point where the road ends.
REDACTED treated it as Sparta.
CheckerboardGeneral79 finally posted the Leonidas GIF.
“This is Sparta!”
Wrong civilization.
Correct temperature.
ClausensFrostedTips followed later with the only reasonable translation of the thread’s mood:
“Next Plowman up.”
Somewhere in Baton Rouge, Lane Kiffin remained stubbornly alive.
That irritated everybody.
Alabama Is Guilty Because Alabama
The LSU discussion remained about LSU for almost twenty minutes.
Then somebody mentioned Alabama.
Of course they did.
One poster wanted Alabama to publicly object to Plowman just so Tennessee could watch them get clowned. Another asked the better question:
“Where was the energy when that NBA kid played basketball for bama?”
That was Charles Bediako, who left Alabama, signed an NBA two-way deal, spent time in the G League and later returned to the Crimson Tide under a temporary court order before a judge ended the comeback after five games.
There are distinctions here.
REDACTED is aware distinctions exist.
REDACTED does not give a shit.
Alabama put an NBA player in an Alabama uniform.
That is the entire case file.
RockyTopBill tried to note that Greg Sankey and the NCAA had opposed Bediako’s return.
VolsDeepState88 swatted this away with the moral certainty of a man returning a defective weed eater.
The player suited up for Alabama, didn’t he?
Yes.
Then shut the hell up.
On REDACTED, Alabama is not a comparison. Alabama is a prior conviction.
By the time RockyTopBill went back to work, the board had established that Alabama had imported an NBA player, received favorable treatment from the known universe and somehow used up all the conference’s outrage before LSU got to the buffet.
The finer points never had a chance.
For background on how we got here: “LSU Gets an NFL Tight End. Tennessee Gets Two Games for Flying Coach.”
Lane Keeps Walking Toward the Fence
The bigger question is what Lane Kiffin thinks he is doing.
The SEC has threatened half-season coach suspensions, major financial penalties and loss of conference voting rights for schools that violate the rule. Lane has nevertheless continued to work the edge created by the court order. He has said LSU will comply with whatever the legal ruling requires, which is the sort of sentence Lane can say while still making everybody in the room check whether their wallet is missing.
SectionQ reduced the strategy to something REDACTED understood:
Lane wants the advantage now. Somebody else can argue about the bill later.
That survived four replies before the thread wandered off the highway.
PigeonRiverVol had arrived.
PigeonRiverVol has been around about six months. He lives in Waynesville, North Carolina, works the parts counter at a Kubota dealership and considers sharing a hometown with Jonathan Crompton a continuing football education.
His contribution to the SEC-LSU standoff was that Lane was doing the same thing Jonathan Crompton eventually learned to do: quit drilling worms and let the damn ball go.
No one had mentioned Jonathan Crompton.
No one had mentioned Waynesville.
No one had mentioned worms.
PigeonRiverVol did not require an invitation.
“Same thing when the Waynesville Worm Burner finally started letting it rip.”
Unfortunately, Cromptons3rdRead was online.
“Nobody called him the Waynesville Worm Burner.”
PigeonRiverVol lives in Waynesville.
Cromptons3rdRead does not.
This strengthened Cromptons3rdRead’s position considerably.
“Everybody back home called him that.”
“No they didn’t.”
LSU vanished.
Donde vanished.
Greg Sankey vanished.
For several glorious posts, the SEC’s most serious eligibility dispute became a western North Carolina nickname fight between two men who have never met Jonathan Crompton.
Neither blinked.
That part may prove relevant later.
The Leadership Part
That is where today’s story ends.
Not with a prediction about Thursday. Not with a midnight clock. Not with somebody pretending to know what the roster will look like Friday morning.
Today is simpler.
Donde Plowman stepped up and said the SEC has a line.
REDACTED decided that was leadership.
Not committee-speak. Not another commissioner explaining why nothing can be done until six more people get sued. A Tennessee chancellor saying enough.
That was catnip.
The board can argue about whether Alabama got away with an NBA player. It can drag Bediako back out of the freezer, ignore every distinction RockyTopBill tries to make and decide Alabama already spent the conference’s entire supply of hypocrisy.
It can decide Lane Kiffin is cheating, innovating, trolling or simply being Lane Kiffin with access to a courthouse.
It can even lose ten minutes to PigeonRiverVol explaining the Waynesville Worm Burner to a man who does not live in Waynesville.
None of that changed the thing the thread liked most.
Somebody finally sounded like she meant it.
CheckerboardGeneral79 called it leadership.
VolsDeepState88 was ready to defend Donde from insults nobody had made yet.
ClausensFrostedTips had the shortest version:
“Next Plowman up.”
That is Part I.
More Plow. Less bullshit.
Donde said enough.
REDACTED said finally.
Next Plowman up.
Related LWS — LSU / NFL Eligibility Case File
- Three LSU Threads. One Meltdown: REDACTED Sanctions LSU, Expels the Tigers and Starts Shopping for a Replacement
- Seven-Page Message Board Meltdown: REDACTED Fires Greg Sankey, Expels LSU and Blames Lane Kiffin
- UPDATE: Jack Pyburn Heads Back Toward LSU; Tennessee Discovers Principles Are Depth-Chart Dependent
- Tennessee Internet Demands LSU Be Removed From SEC; FinCEN Standing By
- LSU Gets an NFL Tight End. Tennessee Gets Two Games for Flying Coach.
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