No. 11 LSU enters game week vs. Clemson with an ex-NFL player practicing and maybe more to come

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Former Cleveland Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright participated in a walk-through practice conducted by first-year LSU coach Lane Kiffin on Monday as the 11th-ranked Tigers prepared for Saturday night’s season opener against Clemson.

Whether Wright or a couple other players who spent part of this offseason with NFL clubs — defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and defensive back Blake Cotton —- ever suit up for LSU remains in doubt because of litigation. Like other power leagues, the Southeastern Conference last week passed a rule barring pro players from returning to the league and it was promptly put on hold by a Texas judge.

Kiffin wasn’t about to allow any kind of criticism stop him from embracing the opportunity to bring in players like Wright, who played for him at Mississippi last season.

“I feel like my decisions should always be made in the best interest of the players that sit in this team room and not for my reputation, and how my decisions play in national media and other fan bases. I’ve never been that way and that could be wrong,” he said.

Kiffin said that if college players are being paid like professionals, he is willing to make the case that college teams should not hesitate to sieze opportunities to make late roster additions in much the same way NFL teams do. He also said he met with LSU team leaders about whether to welcome recent pros back to college just days before a season-opener.

“Every one of them was emphatic about, ‘If they can help us win, bring ’em,’” Kiffin said. “That made me feel a little better.”

“This is how it works at the next level,” Kiffin added. “This is how the real world works.”

Kiffin said the SEC knows that Wright — as star tight end for Kiffin at Ole Miss last season — had joined LSU at least for practice. His first day on the field was Monday, meaning he would not be permitted to play against Clemson under the NCAA’s mandated seven-day “aclimitization protocol.”

However, former Notre Dame defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka, who did not sign with an NFL team but is nonetheless suing for a fifth year of NCAA eligibility, started practicing earlier.

Defensive end Jack Pyburn, who spent training camp with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after playing for LSU last season, was among the players suing the NCAA and was expected to come back to the Tigers after he was cut. Instead, he was claimed off of waivers on Monday by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Nearly 400 athletes have sued the NCAA and other defendants, seeking additional eligibility and claiming the organization’s 5-in-5 rule approved in June is unfair because it excludes members of the high school Class of 2022. More than 30 lawsuits, several of them in federal court, are in different stages of litigation. Some include a handful athletes who signed professional contracts, which prompted every Power Four conference to ban pros from returning to college – leading to even more court filings.

University presidents around the conference have expressed “a high level of frustration” with LSU since Friday, when a Louisiana judge included the SEC in his temporary restraining order against the NCAA, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity because those discussions were not public. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Baton Rouge.

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, who previously worked on the same staff with Kiffin at Southern California, echoed those sentiments.

“Our presidents got this right in the Southeastern Conference,” Sarkisian said. “The fact that somebody out there is going to take a player off an NFL roster and tell somebody who’s been (on their college team) for nine months go kick rocks? That doesn’t sit well with me. I think that is wrong; that is morally wrong.”

Kiffin noted that LSU hasn’t broken any conference rules – yet. Conference teams have to submit their final 2026 rosters the day before their season openers, which for most SEC teams is Friday.

“We’ll wait until this week to see if there’s any more guidance” from the courts, Kiffin said, discounting whether the “chaos” surrounding LSU at the moment might servse as a distraction to him or his team.

“I’ve lived with chaos for a long time,” Kiffin said, noting that Ole Miss won the last five games he coached there while speculation swirled around whether and when he might leave to coach elsewhere.

“We’re going to have chaos, but we’re going to have controlled chaos and our team is going to understand why we do what we do,” Kiffin added. “It doesn’t matter if national media doesn’t understand, or other fan bases.”

New artwork has gone up in the lobby of LSU’s Football Operations Center. It shows the back of an LSU football player standing in the shadows of a tunnel entering a stadium. It states: “If you want to win at the highest level, you have to become a villain in someone else’s story.”

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AP Sports Writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed.

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