Louisiana Voice

By Paul Spillman

When Tom invited me to contribute to LouisianaVoice I told him the issue I was most passionate about at the time was the chaos of misunderstanding about what was happening in college athletics. In truth I am passionate about many things but I’ve assigned myself the one lane and plan to stick to it.

But I didn’t plan to contribute as often as I have. I also didn’t plan to write in the first person. But a summer unlike any I can remember in college athletics presented a need, or at least an opportunity, to address one issue after another. In doing so I tried to adopt a voice of editorial commentary with only an occasional personal opinion inserted, though I didn’t try to hide my honest take on current events. But a conversation with my son has prompted a purely personal submission.

I had considered doing something before the Clemson game on the top five games I’ve seen in Tiger Stadium. Actually, I was going to do six and leave number five blank out of respect to Jayden Daniels but then LSU started signing players granted a fifth year, including at least two who signed a free agent contract with an NFL team. This is part of the fallout from the federal judge who granted an injunction to qualifying athletes from the class of 2022 who never received a fifth year of eligibility. That particular ruling was overturned on appeal, but the most recent rulings have come in state courts not subject to the appeal of a federal court ruling.

With those signings, or intent to sign if it hasn’t actually happened as of this writing, LSU has become the official bad boy/bad girl of college sports. Three of the most prominent sports – football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, but excluding baseball – are led by coaches the rest of fandom loves to despise. But even as Will Wade adds another international player to the roster and a player who has signed NBA contracts it is Lane Kiffin and LSU football getting the bad press and heaps of scorn from everybody with a platform or a voice.

Kiffin’s defense is honest, logical, and relevant even if it doesn’t buy either him or the school any good will. Kiffin’s point is it’s not the fault of the players who have sued for a fifth year of eligibility that they were born in the one wrong year to receive five years of eligibility, the courts have determined they’re eligible for another year – in all sports – and they’ve entered the transfer portal. If LSU doesn’t recruit and sign them someone else will.

But Kiffin has all that baggage he’ll carry around until if or when he wins enough national championships to discard it. And LSU has become a poster university for “win no matter the cost” complete with cartoon governor hiring and firing. That image of both is almost universal among college sports fans. And that prompted me to ask my son a question during a recent phone conversation and both our responses prompted me to write this.

My son and his family live out of state but we talk and text and send photos often. As the college football season has neared he is transitioning from soccer (my grandson plays almost year around) back to football, specifically LSU football. He shares my love for the Tigers and we’ve talked a good bit of football in the last few conversations. In the most recent the subject of signing guys who have been cut from NFL pre-season rosters came up and I asked him as it occurred to me, “If Kiffin was doing all these same things but still at Ole Miss would you feel the same way about it?”

Silence on the other end of the phone. It didn’t really surprise me and it gave me a moment to answer that question for myself. We both came up with “No.” If Kiffin was doing all this at Ole Miss I’d be calling him out for it.

And so I find myself having to criticize the one thing I am most dependent on to escape everything else that’s going on in the world – LSU football. LSU is doing what it has to in the modern world to stay on top and I respect that, even support it in general. But I don’t like any of the things that come with it in 2026. And I don’t like much of what college athletics has become because the NCAA is just useless. Nor do I like Congress having to step in because the NCAA is just useless. Congress as it exists today is a very blunt instrument and all it can accomplish is to bludgeon you into submission.

I don’t like losing 25% of every signing class to the transfer portal but I do think players should be allowed to transfer just like any other student. I agree players should share in the profits. I don’t like talking about how much the current roster cost or how it compares to other schools. I think the NCAA screwed the class of 2022 but I am not a fan of bringing back players that signed professional contracts.

And, to be honest, I am not a fan of Lane Kiffin being the face of all this for LSU. I respect Kiffin as a coach, even more so now that he’s our coach and I’ve seen him more up close and in more detail than I previously knew. But there’s a ton of baggage I could do without and every controversial issue adds more whether it’s justified or not. I could do a whole lot without that as the face of my Tigers.

But what’s a guy to do? I’m not the governor and if I was I wouldn’t be hiring and firing administrators and coaches anyway. I thought Scott Woodward was an excellent Athletic Director and if it was up to me I’d bring him back. He did hire Brian Kelly and that didn’t work out, but he also hired Kim Mulkey, Jay Johnson, and Jay Clark, all of whom won national championships for LSU. But his refusal to bring back Will Wade and the pettiness of Landry and his boy Lee Mallet cost Woodward his job.

So all I can do is watch. Watch the governor interfere, watch the hand-picked hires, watch the sport spiral into chaos as the NCAA slowly dies, watch a team I can hardly name any players on, watch a coach I have mixed feelings about, and hope. Hope the games get here without any more distractions, incidents, or issues. Hope for an undefeated September. Hope for good games to enjoy. Hope for a season to distract me from the looming uncertainty of the midterms. Hope for my Tigers to win a championship. Hope for something to feel good about. And sometimes I get to write about all of it. I just wish I felt better about some of the things I write about.