It has been 60 years since the SEC and a member school divorced. Could that change? Expulsion for LSU is reportedly on the table as the Tigers and first-year coach Lane Kiffin seek to add multiple players who have been part of NFL preseason rosters.
While the threat of expulsion could be mere bluster from angry administrators at SEC schools seeking to keep the Tigers from gaining a competitive advantage, there is at least a sliver of historical precedent for the concept.
The prime 21st-century example of a power conference expelling a school was when the Big East was still a power league on the gridiron. Temple was booted from the conference following the 2004 season for allowing its football program to fall into disrepair.
LSU's poor standing with the SEC falls into a different category than Temple's performance-related dismissal from the Big East. It resembles historical fissures over the very definition of college sports that led to the creation of the SEC in the first place.
Issues around player compensation and amateurism have long been a source of intra-conference consternation. The SEC was formed in 1932 after eight schools from within the sprawling Southern Conference met to discuss how they could better enforce rules on recruiting and player subsidies, among other issues.
Eventually, the friction surrounding those issues and the insinuation that some schools were more serious than others helped create a split along geographical lines. Out of that split came the SEC, which initially laid out a virtuous vision for itself.
In the conference's own words at the time, it sought to develop "public appreciation of the educational, rather than commercial, values in intercollegiate athletics."
However, as articulated in the 2024 book "College Sports: A History," the league's effort to enforce amateurism and reduce commercialism "failed abysmally."
In time, the SEC became the first conference to openly allow its members to play a role in awarding scholarships, which helped lay the groundwork for three of its original 13 members to depart.
However, the league has never kicked a member out. Doing so with LSU would mark an unprecedented move for the SEC and mean parting with one of the most valuable and successful on-field brands in college athletics. The ramifications would be far-reaching. Other departures from the SEC have been school-driven, unlike this one, which could be initiated from within by disgruntled members seeking to use their voting power against what they perceive as a rogue university.
Sewanee leaves first
After the initial Southern Conference fissure that led to the creation of the SEC, there have been instances of schools leaving the conference, but never of a school being expelled. Sewanee was first.
As a private school atop a geographically isolated plateau between Nashville and Chattanooga, Sewanee got left behind in the early years of the SEC and exited the conference in 1940. Despite a glorious history in the early years of college football, it was always an academically minded school and lacked the institutional mission and strength to keep up in the era of athletic scholarships. The Tigers still play football and numerous other sports, but they are a Division III program.
Bobby Dodd's disagreement
Next came Georgia Tech in 1964. Legendary Yellow Jackets coach Bobby Dodd spearheaded the exit, protesting what he perceived as rampant "over-signing" of players within the league. SEC rules at the time allowed programs to sign up to 45 players per year, but they weren't allowed to have more than 140 total scholarship athletes between basketball and football.
That meant coaches could sign significantly more players than they could legally roster. Dodd advocated allowing surplus players who were cut to keep their scholarships. When his push for rules changes to that end failed, the Yellow Jackets left the conference.
Tulane's departure
Tulane was the last SEC school to leave the conference, departing in 1966 after a lengthy institutional de-emphasis of sports. The Green Wave's departure left Vanderbilt as the conference's only private institution. Like Sewanee and Georgia Tech before it, Tulane found it difficult to reconcile the SEC's emphasis on athletics and expenses with its academic identity.
Tulane's exit left the SEC with just 10 schools. It held firm at the number until 1991, when Arkansas and South Carolina joined. The league remained at 12 for over two decades until the arrival of Texas A&M and Missouri in 2012, and then grew to 16 with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas for the 2024 football season.
