pelicanpride

Will the judge’s ruling just be on whether or not to dismiss the case, or is he actually ruling guilty/not guilty? If the judge decides not to dismiss, will there be a full trial after that? I just want to make sure that I understand what the next step is.

Katrina

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The problem with this strategy... He chose the wrong punching bag.

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Also, it’s not sustainable. Is he going to threaten to kick members out every time there is a disagreement?

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To my knowledge, that was only Kentucky last season, and he ended up ineligible.

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Thank you for the response.

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Even having read your analysis, I am STILL not sure the SEC's reason for filing the suit.

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Me either. LSU had broken no rule. My guess is that they wanted LSU to accept some sort of penalty and LSU said - no thanks. The suit is there just for leverage although I’m not sure exactly how that helps the SEC if it’s.a weak case. I guess LSU takes a PR hit since most rational people assume there would be no lawsuit if there weren’t at least some wrongdoing. Maybe the case exists solely for PR purposes.

Thanks for the breakdown. In regards to the SEC argument that LSU will try to block the SEC’s ability to remove LSU from the conference, is the SEC arguing that LSU will try to block a vote on procedural grounds or that LSU will file suit if they are kicked out? LSU hasn’t done the former but would certainly do the latter if removed from the conference. Is the SEC essentially asking for immunity from lawsuit in the event that they do vote LSU out? I’m not a lawyer, but that seems like a real stretch.

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Seriously, can't think of one? How about the one that college football is trying to emulate? The NFL.

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In the NFL, Roger Goodell has considerable authority to impose sanctions on individual franchisees. He can do this unilaterally without oversight from team owners. From what I can tell, Greg Sankey does not have this level of authority nor are league presidents interested in giving him this amount of authority. It appears presidents have to vote on everything, which leads me back to my original comment about competitors being unable to police other competitors.

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The only way it would work is to have a panel of “judges” that have no ties to any one school. Otherwise, biases will always come through.

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Or member institutions would have to agree to give considerable power to the commissioner, which I can’t imagine schools would be willing to do. Right now they’re attempting to have a middle ground where the commissioner is the mouthpiece, but the member institutions own the power. Clearly, that isn’t working.

I’ve come to the conclusion that conference self-governance is doomed. Unlike the NCAA, which has no incentive to harshly punish any individual school, conferences are made up of direct competitors. They may agree on the rules, but when it comes to enforcement, every school has an incentive to bury a rival—especially a traditional power. And what recourse does the school have in that situation? If they don’t want to accept the punishment, they can just leave, which is what will end up happening.
If we’ve had this much of a mess when LSU hasn’t even broken a rule, imagine what happens when a major program actually does. You can’t have competitors policing competitors and expect fair enforcement. The whole premise of conference self governance seems flawed.

That’s sweet his brother is sticking up for him. My two boys are dickheads to each other. Maybe when they get older…