It’s actually a legal controversy which has come to transcend sports, in that the issues involved are worth studying as a matter of operational competency and how – or how not – to make rules which treat people reasonably.

The NCAA, and by extension and their own preferences the SEC and other conferences, don’t seem to have earned particularly high marks in that regard.

We speak here of the battle which will play out in a Baton Rouge courtroom today between a host of currently former college athletes who matriculated from high school in 2022 and were thought to have exhausted their college eligibility by playing for four years; many went on to try out in pro-league camps and most notably the NFL, but didn’t make rosters.

But after their eligibility was exhausted under the old rules, which gave athletes five years to actually play in four years (in football, you could play in four games during a season and still manage to claim a redshirt year) but was riddled with so many exceptions that 6th and 7th years became almost commonplace. The new rule is 5-for-5, meaning that from the time you enroll in college or your 19th birthday, whichever comes first, you have five years of college eligibility. No exceptions, no waivers.

Under a 5-for-5 rule, the entire Class of 2022 would be eligible to participate in college sports in this academic year even if they’d played beyond a redshirt all four previous years. The NCAA says no. The players have gone to court on the issue; many, including a number of players who are part of the lawsuit in Baton Rouge, have gotten temporary restraining orders and injunctions forcing the NCAA to let them play. A group of lawyers in Texas representing the players have secured injunctions in several state courts including the one here.

The SEC and NCAA have said they will follow court rulings as to the players. The SEC then voted to impose strict penalties on schools who put players who have signed professional contracts with American major pro league teams, only to get cut, on their rosters.

This puts schools like LSU in a fairly difficult and almost certainly illegal position – if they refuse to allow players they’ve signed to play under SEC rules which defy a legal injunction, then they take on liability both from those players and the court, which could find them in contempt. Or if they put those players on the roster, they might be OK with the courts but the SEC will impose draconian penalties.

At stake is whether four players who might or might play football at LSU this fall – defensive tackle Zxavian Harris, tight end Dae’Quon Wright, and defensive ends Jack Pybun and Junior Tuihalamaka – are going to be eligible. All but Tuihalamaka went to camp with NFL teams, but none made a roster.

The argument being that if they’d known they could have had an extra year of college eligibility they would have come back to school to play that year. With that option closed off to them at the time, they essentially had no choice but to sign a pro contract and as such they shouldn’t be punished for having done so.

So far, that argument is winning, and the NCAA and the conferences have been fighting a losing battle.

Interestingly enough, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is weighing in and will attend today’s hearing. Murrill put out a statement yesterday to go with an amicus brief in the case. The statement was interesting…

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has filed an amicus brief on behalf of the State of Louisiana in Jack Pyburn, et al. v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, et al.

In the filing, Attorney General Murrill describes the case as “a classic bait-and-switch” and asserts that “the State has an interest in college sports rules that are fair, consistent, and predictable—ones capable of being followed by athletes, coaches, and institutions who don’t have to choose between contempt charges or conference sanctions.”

…and so is the brief. It’s 14 pages and you can see it here, but here’s a summary of what it says.

• Pyburn and the other plaintiffs entered college in 2022.
• The NCAA originally said they would not have another season of eligibility this year.
• The NCAA then changed its mind and indicated they could receive an additional year.
• On April 27, 2026 or thereabouts, the NCAA flipped AGAIN, taking that eligibility away.
• Players made major decisions based on the NCAA’s statements—graduating, going pro, signing contracts, taking jobs, or deciding not to enter the transfer portal.
• On August 28, 2026, the Louisiana court issued a temporary restraining order allowing them to pursue playing opportunities, including entering the transfer portal.

Murrill argues in the brief that it’s fundamentally unfair to make players follow one set of rules, encourage them to rely on those rules, and then change the rules after they have made decisions that cannot easily be undone.

She isn’t arguing that NCAA rules can never change. She’s arguing that changes must be fair, consistent, predictable, and account for players who reasonably relied on the previous rules.

So far, the court has ordered the NCAA and conferences not to enforce certain eligibility restrictions against these players. But the SEC is threatening serious penalties, like fining a program half its revenue and suspending coaches for half a season if a university allows athletes to compete after signing pro contracts before getting cut. The SEC is also threatening to take away the schools’ voting rights within the conference for putting those players on the roster.

That creates a no-win situation: a Louisiana university could obey the judge’s order but get punished by the SEC—or follow the SEC’s position and potentially disobey the court. The AG argues that putting a public university in the state in such a position can’t be allowed under Louisiana law.

And the brief is asking the judge  to support the injunction and allow the players to be eligible while blocking the conferences from punishing schools carrying the plaintiffs on their rosters.

How’s this going to go? We won’t try to guess. But it’s a fascinating debate, one which, based on the bluster and threats coming out of the SEC office and the coordinated media campaign to blast LSU – which is only one school of several to recruit Class of 2022 players currently free agents following the final round of NFL cuts, seems to be heading in a way the conferences and NCAA wouldn’t like.

And if that’s how this goes, they really don’t have a good argument for sympathy given how incompetently the 5-for-5 rule has been implemented.