YOU CAN'T RELEGATE US, WE'RE GOING INDEPENDENT.

The corona shutdowns led to the National Collegiate Athletic Association extending years of eligibility, primarily by allowing more generous "redshirting" or designating players for a variation of injured reserve status.  Recently the association reverted to its pre-pandemic eligibility and redshirting rules, but a few players who had corona-era eligibility left finished their collegiate careers and signed with the professional leagues.

At least for the time being.  Consider, dear reader, a college player who signed a pro contract, didn't make the team, and then treats that remaining year of eligibility as a kind of option to return to his college team.  Sounds like the sort of thing lawyers could litigate all day.

Does a collegiate coach, athletic director, or conference commissioner use a variant on "card laid, card played," to tell such returning players, NO, we are pleased to count you among our alumni, and our recruiting pitch offers opportunities to catch the eye of pro scouts, it does not guarantee it.

Or, does an ambitious coach welcome the opportunity to add some super-senior leadership in the locker room?

At Louisiana State, a football and basketball school with numerous national titles, the answer is to pick up the option and add that leadership to the locker room.

The Southeastern Conference, acting as a corporate entity, says no.  Go through with the recruiting, Louisiana State, and face banishment.

If SEC presidents and chancellors vote to expel LSU from the conference on Thursday — there is a scheduled vote — and if that decision would take effect immediately, the LSU-Ole Miss football game in Oxford next Saturday would transform into a non-conference game, one person within the league suggested.

"The game may not be played at all," another stakeholder quipped.

The ramifications don't stop there, of course. The SEC evicting from the league a longstanding member would serve as an unprecedented move that will invariably cause ripple effects across the country. The school stands to lose millions in conference distribution, have its schedule of games stripped and path to championships blocked — all over their intentions to potentially add professional football and basketball players to their rosters.

Louisiana State have a pretty strong football team even without the returning lettermen, and perhaps the other members of the conference seek a restoration of something resembling competitive balance.

Will the SEC kick out of the league, in the middle of football season, one of its biggest brands in the sport? Will the league boot a football program that's won three national championships since 2003, a baseball team that claimed titles in two of the last four seasons, and women's basketball and gymnastics teams that won it all in 2023 and 2024, respectively?

In all, the university has claimed 53 team national titles.

Surely, the conference would not hit the eject button on this, right?

Yes, lawyers are involved, and yes, there might be a decision Thursday to report on Friday, which is going to otherwise be a serious day.

Face it, the National Collegiate Athletic Association are well past their sell-by date.

The SEC's aggressive approach to LSU is seen as the first test of a potential conference-wide governance framework, a long-discussed concept in the league where it creates and enforces its own rules separate from the NCAA to limit legal challenges. Permitting a member school to already flout conference policies would jeopardize the viability of any new governance concept.

Our prognostication has long been the four power conferences of sixteen teams set up their own basketball and football playoffs.  But then, opting out of part of the cartel has always been an option.  Notre Dame play as an independent in football, opting last Christmas to sit the bowl season out, and Oklahoma, back when they were the era's powerhouse, brought an antitrust suit against the association in order to secure the payoffs their television ratings were earning.

Louisiana State, next major independent?  We'll see.