pelicanpride

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Seriously, can't think of one? How about the one that college football is trying to emulate? The NFL.

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In the NFL, Roger Goodell has considerable authority to impose sanctions on individual franchisees. He can do this unilaterally without oversight from team owners. From what I can tell, Greg Sankey does not have this level of authority nor are league presidents interested in giving him this amount of authority. It appears presidents have to vote on everything, which leads me back to my original comment about competitors being unable to police other competitors.

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The only way it would work is to have a panel of “judges” that have no ties to any one school. Otherwise, biases will always come through.

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Or member institutions would have to agree to give considerable power to the commissioner, which I can’t imagine schools would be willing to do. Right now they’re attempting to have a middle ground where the commissioner is the mouthpiece, but the member institutions own the power. Clearly, that isn’t working.

I’ve come to the conclusion that conference self-governance is doomed. Unlike the NCAA, which has no incentive to harshly punish any individual school, conferences are made up of direct competitors. They may agree on the rules, but when it comes to enforcement, every school has an incentive to bury a rival—especially a traditional power. And what recourse does the school have in that situation? If they don’t want to accept the punishment, they can just leave, which is what will end up happening.
If we’ve had this much of a mess when LSU hasn’t even broken a rule, imagine what happens when a major program actually does. You can’t have competitors policing competitors and expect fair enforcement. The whole premise of conference self governance seems flawed.

That’s sweet his brother is sticking up for him. My two boys are dickheads to each other. Maybe when they get older…

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The continued assumption that women are entitled to what the man earns is an anachronism. They can and do earn as much or more than the man these days.

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And in that event a man wouldn’t “lose half.” I’m starting to think some of y’all think divorce is a “man penalty.” It’s based on who earns what in the marriage regardless of sex.

Marry a woman who makes decent money then you won’t lose half in a divorce. You might even come out ahead.

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Screw this. Imagine if the ncaa has immunity from being sued. They suck as it is.

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They had immunity from being sued for decades, didn’t they? All of this chaos started once the Supreme Court turned them into a toothless organization. There have to be rules, and someone has to enforce them. All I know after this week is that I don’t want that to be the SEC.

If it passes, the Protect College, Sports Act is meant to provide a legal framework within which all teams have to operate. I do think we need some rules. Running to a local judge to get a TRO or injunction every time you don’t like what the NCAA says isn’t a sustainable model. After this last week, I just hope that the NCAA is the enforcement arm and not the SEC, which clearly has an ax to grind against LSU. If the PCSA passes, doesn’t this need for conference self-regulation essentially go away? Seems like it could be a good thing for LSU.

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If the School Presidents/AD's really understand that the SEC wants to punish LSU and administration for discussing in public of how the SEC or NCAA have handled something, will the schools really be OK with this arbitrary and broad accusation of "Institutional Control" in order to punish a school? Are they going to think about what that might mean for them in the future?

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I’ve wondered the same thing. If they can get past the Kiffin hate for two seconds, it’s just common sense to realize this means that no one is safe. Greg Sankey is going to be remembered as the commissioner who allowed cracks to form in the foundation of the SEC.

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I can't believe I am saying this, but I have to defend LSU and Lane Kiffin here. I don't enjoy it.

Strip away the pearl-clutching and read the SEC's own complaint and Sankey's declaration. The conference seems intent on doing something regardless. Complaint ¶ 94 and Sankey ¶ 44: the CEOs will proceed "whether LSU renounces its intention to roster and play professional players on its football team, or not." Paragraph 81 goes further, saying the same thing whether or not LSU ever rosters anyone at all. That language was drafted to survive precisely what happened Tuesday night when LSU filled its roster to 105 and left no room for the pros. I get that it may succeed procedurally. It fails catastrophically as persuasion because it concedes that the expulsion has nothing to do with the conduct the lawsuit is about.

So look at what is actually left. Kiffin's press conferences, his obnoxious halftime remark, his GameDay appearance, and LSU's supposed alignment with the Baton Rouge plaintiffs who hold that wacky, overbroad injunction. Compl. ¶¶ 77, 89-92. That is the gravamen. If the SEC disciplines LSU on that record, and asks a federal court to bless it, what it is really punishing is a public employee's speech about a matter of public concern.

That is a First Amendment case. It just isn't the SEC's. It's Kiffin's. Fifteen of the sixteen members are public universities, and the conference is governed by their presidents, who are themselves state actors. Brentwood Academy v. TSSAA, 531 US 288 (2001), held that a private athletic association can be a state actor through pervasive entwinement with the public institutions that constitute it. Whether the SEC clears that bar is a serious question, and I wouldn't call it a foregone conclusion. But the irony writes itself. The SEC's entire theory depends on LSU officials being state actors, and the SEC pleads at ¶ 96, citing West v. Atkins, that Kiffin is one. Ironically, if not shockingly, that supplies the predicate for Kiffin's claim against it.

Kiffin is a public employee criticizing his governing body's policy, which puts him on the side of Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 US 563 (1968) (teacher fired for a letter to the paper criticizing how his school board spent money, where the Court held a public employee does not surrender the right to speak as a citizen on matters of public concern, and courts must weigh that interest against the employer's interest in running its operation). If Kiffin pleads retaliation as a counterclaim, it will be a much, much better First Amendment claim than the one the SEC is asserting in its complaint.

To be clear, I think LSU and Kiffin instigated this mess, and I think conferences can write product-defining eligibility rules. Alston did not bless such rules, but it did not condemn them either. Justice Gorsuch's opinion for the Court was careful to decide only what was in front of it — education-related benefits — and it left undisturbed the finding that some restraints preserving the line between college and professional sports can be procompetitive. The SEC has a real defense there, subject to the rule of reason like anyone else. I am on Team SEC.

But the conference is missing a lot. It meets today to consider punishing LSU and Kiffin. It can punish a violation of its rules. What it cannot do is punish speech alone. After Tuesday night, speech is all that is left. LSU filled its roster to 105. No professional will play a down. The harm the SEC went to federal court to prevent never happened.

LSU and Kiffin just talked about it.