At some point, the inevitable was going to happen. All it took was a desperate coach in a desperate situation.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce desperation: LSU men’s basketball coach Will Wade.
The Tigers have four players listed on the 2026-27 roster, published on the school’s official website. I’m not great at math, but as classes begin Monday, Wade is set for his own Norman Dale moment.
Official: “Coach, you need one more.”
Wade, in his best Norman Dale: “My team is on the floor.”
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And if SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has his way, it’s going to be more difficult for Wade to fill out his 2026-27 roster with real, live college basketball players.
Wade and LSU are awaiting eligibility rulings on numerous players, part of which flies in the face of Sankey’s edict that schools move carefully when adding players seeking a fifth year of eligibility through the court system.
The same court system that on Wednesday gave a group of former players — whose eligibility expired at the end of last season — a temporary restraining order to gain a fifth year in response to the NCAA’s new eligibility standard of five years to play five seasons.
The NCAA recently passed the standards, and has since been picking and choosing which appeals from the class of 2022 to approve and deny. Which, of course, is stupid.
Not surprisingly, those moves have led to multiple lawsuits against the NCAA — which eventually brings us back to LSU vs. the SEC. The inevitable we all knew was around the bend.
Former St. John’s star player RJ Luis, who left for the NBA after the 2025 season and signed an NBA two-way contract, has committed to play for LSU and has taken the friendly local judge route to do so.
There, in the same East Baton Rouge courtroom where a group of former players were given the TRO, Luis asked the court for a similar exemption. Sankey filed an affidavit in the Luis case, and said allowing athletes who have signed professional contracts to return to college disrupts the ecosystem of college sports — and harms other players in search of roster spots in the process.
I’m not sure any of us fully understand the legal gymnastics currently playing out, including the parties involved. But I do know this: LSU blatantly ignoring an edict from the SEC commissioner — the man works in lockstep with the league’s presidents and chancellors — is bad for business.
Bad for the SEC’s reputation as a win-at-all-cost conference, and bad for Sankey’s ability to herd 16 member institutions in the same direction in other future, critical structural moves. Like the SEC playing by its own rules if Congress can’t pass the Protect College Sports Act.
How does the conference believe it can get all 16 to play together and play fairly by the same rules, if LSU — and maybe others — can’t agree to the current, simple ask from Sankey and the presidents and chancellors to tread carefully?
Any by treading carefully, they mean don’t do it.
When a single institution decides nothing will deter it from competing at the highest level, with the best coaches money can buy, and the best players money can buy — rules or edicts or simple professional courtesy be damned — not even the executives of its own conference can stop it.
LSU could end this charade by telling Luis we wish you luck on your appeal to gain an extra year of eligibility, but you can’t play here. That, and other member schools doing the same with the group of athletes that received the TRO ― three of whom played football last season at Ole Miss.
That’s what Sankey wants and expects.
But he better not get caught watching the paint dry on what could be the last shot at preserving order.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Greg Sankey drew a line in the sand. LSU walked right over it | Opinion
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