Judge rules LSU can roster ex-NFL players in defiance of SEC rules ahead of Friday's roster deadline
NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...
LSU is free to roster players who were on NFL rosters earlier this summer. Will the Tigers actually do it?
Louisiana judge William Jorden ruled in favor of players looking for a fifth year of eligibility and against the SEC after a lengthy proceeding on Thursday. Players like former Ole Miss TE Dae'Quan Harris and former Rebels DT Zxavian Harris were granted a preliminary injunction that allows them to play college football in 2026 even though they were cut from NFL teams.
Both have committed to play for LSU and their former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin. And on Friday, LSU has to send its roster for the 2026 season to the SEC. If they or any other players who had signed contracts with NFL teams are on that roster, an even bigger legal fight could unfold.
And Harris told reporters after the ruling that he expects to be on LSU's roster tomorrow.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry also celebrated the ruling. He played a significant role in the Tigers' pursuit of Kiffin after LSU fired Brian Kelly during the 2025 season.
The court has ruled in favor of the athletes! Again, they are not professional football players circling back after years in the NFL. They are college players who were told, by the NCAA, that they were done. So they took the only door that was open, only to watch the NCAA change…
— Governor Jeff Landry (@LAGovJeffLandry) September 4, 2026
The SEC filed a lawsuit against Kiffin and LSU earlier in the day in an Alabama federal court. In the wake of the initial Louisiana ruling that gave players from the class of 2022 a fifth year of eligibility even if they had been on an NFL team, the SEC and other power conferences passed rules prohibiting players who had been with NFL teams from playing for a member school.
The conference wants to enforce that rule and cited its First Amendment rights to tell members to comply with the rules in the suit. The league said that Kiffin and LSU "orchestrated a campaign to recruit professional athletes" to play for the Tigers.
It said in a statement Thursday night that it disagreed with Jorden’s ruling.
“We disagree with the court’s decision,” the SEC said.
“The SEC’s presidents and chancellors unanimously adopted a clear and reasonable standard: member universities should not play former professional athletes on their rosters. The conference and its member universities have the right to establish, through agreed-upon governance procedures, the rules under which they voluntarily compete and to expect those rules to be followed.
“The SEC will continue to defend this standard, the principle of fair competition, and the conference’s authority to govern competition among its member universities.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey testified for multiple hours as part of Thursday's hearing in Louisiana. In his testimony, Sankey defended his conference's right to set and enforce its own rules. His testimony came after Georgia attorney general Chris Carr said in a letter to the SEC on Wednesday that the league should consider taking drastic action against LSU if the Tigers roster a former NFL player.
It's a sentiment that's shared among other schools in the SEC.
If LSU doesn't have a player who was on an NFL roster on its own roster on Friday, the potential for a fight isn't necessarily over, either. If the Tigers leave roster spots open — a school can roster up to 105 scholarship players — Kiffin and his coaching staff are free to add players to those open spots as the season goes on. So if LSU doesn't want to test the SEC's wrath ahead of Week 1, it could wait another week or two.
However, it could be testing the limits of that injunction by doing so. As part of his ruling, Jorden enjoined the NCAA, SEC and even LSU from taking action to prevent players from playing.
The whole problem stems from college sports' rampant disorganization in recent years as it's opened the doors for athletes to get paid for NIL deals and also sign revenue-sharing deals with schools. Players like Wright and Harris played four seasons in their four years of college eligibility. But the NCAA announced in June — after the 2026 NFL Draft — that athletes from the class of 2023 onward would immediately have five years to play five seasons.
The timing of the announcement led to multiple lawsuits from players in the class of 2022 who thought they had exhausted their eligibility in the 2025-26 school year.
More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos