SEC is in a very uncomfortable legal position and might not have any power over players

This stopped being about two players the second the SEC went into federal court claiming it was a private association with First Amendment rights. Fifteen of the 16 SEC schools are public universities. So now the obvious question is how 15 public institutions, represented by their presidents and chancellors, can get together, make decisions that could crush another public university financially, and then turn around and say those decisions are private.

That’s why the Brentwood case matters. The Supreme Court has already ruled that a supposedly private athletic association can be treated as a state actor when public schools and public officials are heavily involved in running it. In that case, 84% of the members were public schools. The SEC is 15 out of 16.

And that is really what people were getting at when they kept asking how 15 people could sit in a room and decide LSU’s future. Those presidents and chancellors are not there as private citizens. They are there representing state universities. If the conference is being controlled by those public institutions, then the SEC may not be able to hide behind being a “private association” when it suits them.

That also changes the Wright and Harris situation. If the SEC’s actions are eventually treated as state action, their claims could potentially move beyond eligibility and lost money into civil-rights territory, especially if there is evidence they were punished for going to court and winning relief. At that point, the emails, texts and meeting notes between Sankey, Plowman and the other presidents become a lot more important.

That’s the real danger for the SEC. They went to court trying to protect their authority over LSU and may have accidentally put the entire legal structure of the conference on trial. And if a court ever says SEC enforcement is state action, this does not stop with the SEC. The Big Ten, Big 12 and other conferences built around public universities could have the exact same problem.