Put this on my highlight reel
I was dead asleep and our phone started going off
Immediately sprung into recording mode before I was even awake
(Please stop prank calling)
Ole Miss fans can’t move on because Lane was so good there he convinced them that Ole Miss was something it wasn’t: A big time CFB program
Lane leaving proved every Ole Miss fans biggest nightmare about their school true, they are nothing more than a stepping stone program
Where things appear to stand:
The case in federal court in Birmingham just did what a backwards § 1983 / Ex parte Young filing deserved. The temporary restraining order (TRO) hearing was postponed, with no new date. LSU filled the roster, told Sankey the fight was moot, and Sankey’s federal padlock request went cold. Those cheering the case that this was a larger fight than the two players, and that the SEC was going to use this (deeply flawed) vehicle to set its own rules, are crushed by events. That lawsuit will sit on the docket, and it does not lock the Louisiana courthouse. It likely never will.
The state case is still the live one. Jorden already enjoined the NCAA, the SEC, and Sankey from enforcing the exclusion and from punishing a school for using the named players. The players’ attorney, Tony Clayton, is now pointing the next filing at Sankey, the SEC, and the NCAA, not at LSU. That state train is still moving down the tracks. The state court can still order Wright and Harris onto the LSU roster and crank up the penalties until it sticks.
Sankey is weaker than he was a week ago. He asked federal court in Birmingham to freeze Louisiana and bless an expulsion meeting. He got neither. Instead, Sankey got a continuance and a letter saying the roster fight is moot. That is not control. That is a retreat.
Sankey burned enormous political capital to achieve nothing. He bought hostility in the national media, in Louisiana state government, and in the federal government, and lost support among the SEC university presidents. Sankey failed to buy the padlock he so desperately sought.
The punchline writes itself, as neither Sankey nor LSU had to be in this mess. The athletes sued the NCAA. Yet Sankey could not keep his mouth shut and said the conference would enforce its rules no matter what the court said. That is why the state court named Sankey and the SEC in the litigation. That is why LSU got pulled in as a shield, then squeezed by expulsion talk until it left Wright and Harris off the roster.
If Sankey had thought for a minute and stayed quiet, federal court in Birmingham would have nothing to padlock and the state court in Baton Rouge would still be an NCAA eligibility case. Instead Sankey talked the conference into the state lawsuit, then asked a federal judge to gag the court that already ruled. The federal vehicle stalled as it was destined to. The state case did not. Sankey got nothing for his efforts but embarrassment for himself and the SEC.