Joe Goodman says you baws should thank Brother Lane

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It’s going to be really awkward when LSU wins the SEC and league commissioner Greg Sankey has to hand the trophy to Lane Kiffin.

On Tuesday, the SEC filed an amendment to its federal lawsuit against LSU and Kiffin that would grant league presidents and chancellors the authority to boot LSU out of the SEC. An absurd move? Well, yes, but it was a necessary parry to keep Kiffin in line.

A potential for expulsion means this whole ego exhibition has officially gone too far, but we all know that Kiffin wouldn’t have it any other way.

Can we please just play football?

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No one wants LSU to be kicked out of the SEC. LSU is the SEC, and LSU, thanks to Kiffin, is extremely good for business these days.

Above all else, let’s never forget that cash is king.

The league is suing LSU to prevent Kiffin from adding a pair of former NFL players, but, thanks to the SEC’s latest threat, it appears this ludicrous game of chicken is finally coming to an end.

A few hours after landing in the league’s crosshairs, LSU finalized its 105-man roster by adding a pair of returning players who are enrolled in classes. The failed NFL players who wanted back into college, Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, appear to be out of work.

If you’re keeping score at home, then mark it Greg Sankey 4, Lane Kiffin 3.

Kiffin’s ego appeared to be winning the duel after the 51-10 beat down of Clemson. He even joked about adding NFL players at halftime with ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe. Sankey didn’t like that, of course, and his latest court maneuvering even used Kiffin’s wisecrack — “Imagine if we had NFL players.” — as pretext for censuring the Tigers.

The SEC’s big wigs are still scheduled to meet on Thursday about LSU, but it’s all for show. I can’t imagine that Sankey wants his legacy as commissioner to be ruining the SEC. That’s what would happen without LSU in the league.

And imagine if LSU went to the Big Ten and dominated that inferior conference.

Yeah, not happening.

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Look at this way. Thanks to Kiffin and LSU, the SEC has never been more interesting, or more valuable. That might be counterintuitive to the bluster coming from Sankey, but that’s showbiz.

Think ESPN wants LSU out of the SEC? Check the ratings after the LSU-Ole Miss game and get back to me.

Kiffin is an irritant, but this latest meeting of SEC presidents and chancellors is about more than the problems being created by the SEC’s insufferable showman. The heart of the problem is LSU athletics being used as a political chess piece by Louisiana governor Jeff Landry.

If Sankey really wanted to pick a fight, then he would tell Landry to stick to backwater Louisiana politics and leave the SEC alone.

Landry has hijacked LSU’s athletic department for political gain. First, he used his power to remove athletics director Scott Woodward and hire a lackey. Landry then stole Kiffin from rival Ole Miss and next brought back fired basketball coach Will Wade.

Landry backed Kiffin’s move to add NFL players, too.

“Calling them ‘NFL players’ is at best disingenuous, and at worst intentionally deceptive,” Landry wrote on social media. “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 the lock behind them.”

Landry’s political posturing might be disgusting, but public malfeasance is one of the trapdoors of inherently corrupt college football. There’s always going to be a new way to rig this broken system.

Hopefully the U.S. Senate has been paying attention during its current summer recess. Maybe most of all, college sports need protection from guys like Louisiana’s governor.

But if the proposed Protect College Sports Act becomes law, then let the record show that it was fox-in-a-clown-suit Kiffin who saved our American obsession.

Not Congress.

Not the President.

Not the SEC’s executives or its commissioner.

By making the SEC sue one of its own schools, and challenging LSU with banishment, Kiffin should get full credit for forcing reform.

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