Why I Won't Watch Ohio State After LSU and Lane Kiffin Trash College Football | Ep 1225

**Jason Whitlock** (0:00)
The Southeastern Conference said professional athletes should not return to college. Same night, a Louisiana judge put one on LSU's roster. Lane Kiffin said no, then he said a judge opened the door, so they play for you, or they play for someone else.
College sports are in ruins. That chaos is why I will not watch Ball State play Ohio State in football this year.
You hear a lot about what's going on at LSU. You hear a lot about the SEC. You should. That is the high-end chaos. No rules, just court injunctions. A failure of leadership so complete that a conference can draw a sacred line and watch its own champion step over it before the statement is cold.

**James Dodds** (0:54)
There's that fire. Grab your popcorn.

**Jason Whitlock** (0:57)
Monday, the SEC president said college sports are for college athletes. Anyone who leaves, signs a professional contract, and competes professionally should not be permitted to return. Same day, LSU is the destination.
RJ. Lewis Jr. went undrafted in the NBA in 2025, took a two-way contract with the Jazz, and Exhibit 10 with the Celtics played preseason, and never appeared in a regular season NBA game.
He walked into East Baton Rouge Parish, and Judge Ronald R. Johnson ruled that in the court's mind, he did not actually play professional basketball. The roster is being assembled by restraining order. This is not one basketball player. The football version is already on campus. Men who left signed NFL contracts, then found a Louisiana court more convenient than a national standard. The NCAA won a federal blanket waiver fight in Colorado on Friday. It is losing the war, one state judge at a time. Eligibility used to live in a national office. It lives on a parish docket now. Lane Kiffin told on the whole industry with both hands. In general, NFL players should not come back to college. Also, a judge opened the door, so they play for you or they play for someone else, and his job is LSU. That is not a coach problem. That is a league with a commissioner in name only. A conference that cannot police its own champion is not a conference. It is a TV show. It is TV inventory. The sports media wasted decades, fixated on major college playoff systems rather than the rotting foundation of college sports. They will hand you ball projections while the definition of the product is being rewritten in batting rules. That is looking at the chandelier while the foundation cracks. They professionalize the labor. The people paid to challenge authority, help the authority expand the postseason because the authority wanted to expand its bank account. They left a leftover amateur line sitting in court like a speed limit nobody intends to enforce. They did not burn the church. They sold the pews and kept the stained glass for the broadcast open. What is happening at mid-majors like my Ball State Cardinals is downstream from all of that high-end chaos.
When the top of the sport has a commissioner name only, a school like mine cannot keep young talent long enough to become a team. The transfer portal is not a separate scandal. It is the weather that blows off the SEC's mess and lands in Muncie. I played college football at Ball State in the late 1980s. After graduation, I became the biggest Ball State football fan maybe ever. I have been that fan since the late 1980s. This year is the first time we have ever played Ohio State. Twenty years ago, this would have been the biggest game on my sports calendar, but this year I will not watch. Let me paint a picture of what a mid-major used to be allowed to build.
In August of 2006 on ESPN's page 2, I wrote about having an AP ballot and I used it to tell the country what was coming in Muncie.
At the bottom of that column, I named Nate Davis, Dante Love, Robert Buster, Andre Ramsey, Darius Hill, Dan Gerberi and Brian Haynes. I wrote that Michigan still had to survive an early November showdown against my Ball State Cardinals inside the big house. That November, they did not survive and clean. We lost 34 to 26 at Michigan. We put a scare in the number two team in America on their field. It is the only time in history Ball State has played Michigan in football.
Two years later, those same young men that I talked about in that article, ran a perfect regular season and all the way up to like number 13 in the country.
Davis, Buster, Ramsey, Hill, Gerberi, they all reached the NFL. Dante Love would have been a high end NFL draft pick. He broke his neck at Indiana in 2008 Brian Haynes, he's now the offensive, a defensive coordinator at Indiana. Those guys stayed long enough that a kid who played at Ball State in the 1980s got to live the highest sports high of his adult life. In the transfer portal era, all of those players would have left Muncie long before they developed into those men. I would have never lived 2006 or 2008 Mid-majors like Ball State cannot build teams like we did in 2008 The young, talented players transfer out long before they become great players. The sustained chaos has ruined the experience of sports fans. There is before the portal and then there's after the portal. After is this. Ball State's quarterback is a transfer kid, I'm talking about this year, with no connection to Ball State, Keldrick Luster. He's famous for being 5'10 and 250 pounds and oversized Friar hydrant. He beat out another transfer, Tyler Mizzell, who is 170 pounds, the polar opposite.