ATHENS \u2014 LSU football has been quite a spectacle of late, on and off the field, but former Georgia coach and ACC Network analyst Mark Richt believes the legal wrangling aren\u2019t enough to deter college football fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing surprises me anymore out of the lines,\u201d Richt, a first-ballot College Football Hall of Famer told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.<\/p>\n
Kiffin and LSU, of course, had moved to sign and add two former player who had signed with NFL teams and been cut to their roster, angering SEC leadership which in turn filed a federal lawsuit \u2014 and later, an amendment \u2014 to ensure it could enforce its rules.<\/p>\n
Voting LSU out of the SEC when league presidents and chancellors meet on Thursday was among the possibilities, though Kiffin recently filled two vacant roster spots presumably held open for the former pros with non-professional players, signaling a white flag of sorts.<\/p>\n
Richt, however, indicated he wasn\u2019t too concerned about fans losing their interest in the game, even with the off-field distractions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that saves the sport is that when you kick off, the product between the lines is still amazing,\u201d Richt said. \u201cIt still means a lot to a lot of people, and there are very strong bonds between the fanbases and their teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richt, like most everyone else, has heard the consternation and is no fan of it himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople can say it makes them almost not want to watch,\u201d Richt said. \u201cBut \u2018almost\u2019 is not going to happen. People love college football.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Richt\u2019s point, Week Zero viewing was up 10 percent year-over-year.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS \u2014 LSU football has been quite a spectacle of late, on and off the field, but former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[356857,356858,399,45366,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-842899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-akins-ford-arena","tag-athens-football","tag-football","tag-kickoff","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842899","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=842899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}