Sanity has prevailed throughout the Southeastern Conference, a land where it just means more of everything but that of late. It was not a lawyer, a temporary restraining order or a tersely worded statement sent through an old public relations apparatus that did the trick either. It was a dash of common sense, a sliver of swallowed pride and a modicum of brinkmanship taken to its inevitable conclusion. The hill to die on, everyone finally recognized, was not a pair of backup football players who did not tangibly improve what is already one of the best and most expensive teams in the country. So on Tuesday night, in a savvy news dump on a day where college football spun wildly with stories on numerous fronts, LSU finally signaled it was ready to de-escalate its fight with its own conference office. In lieu of adding former NFL players Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris to the team—as it had threatened to do for weeks amid numerous lawsuits—the football program instead finalized its 105-man roster for the season with defensive lineman Gabriel Reliford and corner Aidan Anding. After so much bluster and belligerence, there was no clearer sign that the Tigers finally backed down. Both the pass rusher (torn ACL) and cover guy (torn Achilles) are unlikely to play a snap in 2026 after suffering injuries in spring ball, so their formal inclusion within the squad-size limit signals nothing but a formal white flag in this affair.“The roster is now locked for the season. LSU complied with SEC rules,” school president Wade Rousse said in a letter sent to commissioner Greg Sankey on Wednesday morning. “This issue is moot.”Like all good compromises, nobody will really be happy about such a move.Wright and Harris will feel like the rug was pulled out from under them, believing they would be added to the roster following their preliminary injunction on Thursday, only to be forced into huddling with their lawyers following LSU’s decision five days later. The SEC certainly has not been pleased at how all this has played out, from the billable hours racked up to threats—both real and imagined—which have spilled out far beyond the message boards that dot the league’s footprint.The football coach most prominently at the center of the storm, who cannot help himself on national television or behind the scenes, won’t be either. He may actually take being a named defendant on the opposite side of the conference as a badge of honor, but something adversely affecting his team on the field is going to rile him up just the same.“My job is what I believe is right, and I believe we were fighting for what was right for those kids,” Lane Kiffin said Saturday after beating Clemson, referring to the two former Ole Miss players returning from NFL camps. “I’m not going to get into all the reasons, but that’s what I believe. So many people don’t like that, but they don’t understand that. If they knew mine [or] our relationship with Dae’Quan, I think they would think a little bit differently.”LSU coach Lane Kiffin did not add the former NFL players to the Tigers’ roster in a rare moment of sanity. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters ConnectThe school’s athletics and university administration has been in an awkward spot throughout this ordeal despite being nominally in charge of what LSU says and does. They have been squeezed on one side by vocal local and state politicians that many senior members largely owe their jobs to. On the other side lay a football and men’s basketball coaching staff looking to push boundaries without any real grasp of the consequences—a group those same administrators owe their job security to long term. That is a difficult tension to operate in daily, much less doing so in a place like Baton Rouge where every faction gets thrown into the same jambalaya pot with the heat turned to boil.In their filing Tuesday in federal court, the SEC cited “lack of institutional control” (or something similar) numerous times when framing the reckless abandon they view LSU’s actions as. Instead of numerous pages devoted to explaining why, perhaps they could have just put a picture of the Tigers’ triumvirate of uncontrollable administrative headaches. In Kiffin, Will Wade and Kim Mulkey, a group of powerful coaches running the three most prominent teams on campus, they have a trio who actively look for gray areas.You go ahead and try to tell that group, “No,” and see what happens—they’re liable to proceed as usual by treating a signal to stop more as a yield sign. Indeed, it is not just Kiffin—someone formally reprimanded by the SEC for violating the league’s code of ethics 17 years ago—who has drawn the ire of the rest of the conference for attempts to roster former professional players. Athletic directors and school presidents have seethed for weeks about Wade’s actions in trying to bring in R.J. Luis Jr., and his hire was met with plenty of frustration and eye rolls across the league footprint. Wade may even, privately, have just as much outrage directed at his desk as the more public outrage which has attached itself to the football coach down the street. Adding all that together in such a short time frame is also why the SEC must keep moving forward with its legal case all the way to its logical conclusion. The recent reduction in hostilities surrounding NFL players at LSU in the past 24 hours is only one front in a multipronged war, partially explaining why Wednesday's hearing in Alabama federal court was rescheduled for another day. A meeting of SEC power brokers on Thursday remains on the docket. If there is one thing the entire league must agree upon, it’s that Sankey should remain steadfast in pursuing this matter until he gets the proper legal cover to enforce the rules his membership has already agreed to. As the commissioner noted five months ago at spring meetings, schools, coaches and people in college athletics have to want to be governed, but it sure helps following through on that with consequences when they step outside the line.“The SEC and its member universities have the right to establish, through agreed-upon governance procedures, the rules under which they voluntarily compete and to expect those rules to be followed. A commitment to those rules, and to the core principles of the Southeastern Conference, is an essential element of SEC membership,” a statement from the league said Tuesday.Now it’s time to cement that in writing and bring it above reproach. If not, Kiffin, Wade and others will find other areas to gain an edge and yet more state courts to agree with their way of operating. More schools than just LSU will be willing to push the limits of what’s accepted and the notion of what it means to be in the same boat together will continue to dissolve further. The threat of actually kicking LSU out of the SEC for raising this ruckus seems to have thankfully faded now that cooler heads have prevailed. But the resolve to carry through on such a threat needs to remain hanging over everyone’s head just the same, the type of Sword of Damocles which just might mean more in reality if it can keep everyone in line.PODCAST: Listen to Sports Illustrated’s college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, hosted by Pat Forde, on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s college YouTube channel or on SI TV.Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow