{"id":837649,"date":"2026-09-05T19:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/837649\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T19:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:22:08","slug":"lane-kiffin-leaving-former-nfl-players-off-roster-in-best-interest-of-lsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/837649\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin: Leaving former NFL players off roster in best interest of LSU"},"content":{"rendered":"

LSU opted against<\/a> putting former NFL players Dae\u2019Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris on their roster for Saturday\u2019s game against Clemson on Friday night and that decision pushed pause on the collision between the school and the Southeastern Conference about their desire to have the players on the field this season. <\/p>\n

The SEC is opposed to member schools having players who have spent time in the NFL on the roster, but a preliminary injunction in Louisiana barred the conference or the NCAA for penalizing any school that put them on the field. The conference has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent those players from playing and LSU\u2019s head coach Lane Kiffin cited \u201cthe uncertainties of what could come\u201d as the reason for the decision to keep Wright and Harris off the field during an appearance on ESPN on Saturday morning. <\/p>\n

Kiffin said that he believes that decision was in the \u201cbest interest\u201d of the school, but the players could still be added to the roster at a later date so there\u2019s no sign that this is the end of the road. Matt Hayes of USA Today quoted a source saying that they were \u201cnot sure LSU would still be a member<\/a>\u201d of the SEC if the rest of the conference\u2019s schools had voted on Friday and ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum suggested the same<\/a> on air on Saturday. <\/p>\n

Attorney Ryan Downton, who represents Wright and Harris, said in a statement, via Pete Thamel of ESPN, that LSU made a \u201cmeasured decision<\/a>\u201d and that \u201ceveryone should use that space to lower the temperature and look at the facts\u201d around the case. Downton went on to make the case by noting neither player made a roster or played in a preseason game and closed the statement by hoping that \u201clevel heads prevail.\u201d <\/p>\n

Little about the process thus far suggests that will be the case and the ongoing court cases mean that there\u2019s likely a lot more to come in the fight that has taken center stage in college football as the 2026 season gets underway. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LSU opted against putting former NFL players Dae\u2019Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris on their roster for Saturday\u2019s game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-837649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}