In his Oct. 30 column, USA TODAY columnist Matt Hayes did more than argue that LSU has handled its fight with the Southeastern Conference badly.

He rewrote who did what.

USA TODAY then promoted the column on X with an even more revealing line: “LSU poked the bear. Now the SEC gets its turn.”

That framing gives away the premise. The SEC is not presented as a governing organization asking a federal judge to resolve a disputed question of authority. It is the angry bear LSU provoked, and now it is entitled to retaliate.

That may sell the column. It is not a responsible description of pending litigation.

Hayes says LSU has “no safe exit” because it “backed itself into this position.” He treats the athletes, their lawyers, Louisiana officials and LSU as one coordinated operation. He describes the Nov. 18 federal hearing as though the SEC will win or lose the entire case that day. He writes as though punishment will follow if the SEC wins. He even suggests LSU President Wade Rousse should have threatened to fire Lane Kiffin for cause for embarrassing the conference.

That is more than a hard opinion about LSU. It is reckless because several facts necessary to support it are wrong.

LSU did not file the federal lawsuit in Birmingham. The SEC sued LSU.

LSU did not question SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey for three hours in Baton Rouge. The athletes’ lawyers did.

LSU is not presently defying the SEC’s professionalism policy. Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris are not on LSU’s football roster. LSU filled all 105 spots without them. Basketball coach Will Wade publicly promised to follow SEC protocols and has not rostered RJ Luis Jr.

The SEC obtained the practical compliance it demanded. Then it continued pursuing LSU in federal court.

Hayes calls LSU’s reliance on those facts “semantics.” It is nothing of the kind. It is the central question in the case: What is LSU doing now that requires federal judicial relief?

The SEC says LSU or Louisiana officials could interfere with future discipline, including a possible vote on LSU’s membership. It wants advance judicial protection of its governing authority. That is a real argument, but it is not proof of an ongoing violation. U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon must decide whether the claimed threat is concrete enough to keep the lawsuit alive. Hayes treats the allegation as an established fact.

LSU deserves criticism. It recruited and signed athletes whose eligibility was certain to produce a confrontation, and it waited until the edge before backing away. But that does not turn every action by an athlete’s lawyer into an LSU action, convert compliance into defiance or change who sued in federal court. The SEC did.

Hayes writes that the Nov. 18 hearing will occur outside the “friendly confines of Louisiana jurisdiction.”

That is a cheap shot at Louisiana judges offered without evidence that any of them acted improperly.

Judge William Jorden issued an order specifically forbidding the SEC from punishing LSU, its coaches or administrators for signing, rostering or playing the football plaintiffs covered by his injunction. The Louisiana First Circuit declined to stay that protection.

The SEC responded almost immediately with a new conference policy and new institutional threats. The policy barred athletes who had entered specified professional drafts, signed with NFL, NBA or WNBA organizations or appeared on their rosters. The possible penalties included a fine equal to half of a sport’s operating budget, a half-season suspension for the head coach and restrictions on the school’s conference rights.

Then the SEC threatened LSU’s membership.

The order is not debatable: A Louisiana judge protected the athletes and prohibited punishment of LSU. The SEC adopted a new policy, attached severe penalties and raised expulsion. LSU backed down. While Sankey was still on the witness stand in Jorden’s courtroom Sept. 3, the SEC filed in Birmingham. That is the chronology Hayes reverses.

His dismissal of Louisiana as a friendly judicial refuge became even less defensible as similar eligibility disputes produced court action in Ohio and Indiana.

On Oct. 29, the Ohio Supreme Court kept a trial-court injunction in effect in Borovicanin v. NCAA while it considers whether to accept an appeal in an eligibility case. That procedural action did not finally decide the merits. It did establish that Louisiana is not the only place where courts and state officials are confronting athletic organizations that threaten schools after athletes obtain judicial protection.

On Oct. 30, the Indiana Court of Appeals denied the NCAA’s request to shorten the time and expedite briefing in another eligibility case. The litigation involves Indiana football players Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt and other athletes. The order did not decide the merits either. It left the existing relief in place while the appeal proceeds, allowing the athletes to remain eligible for now.

The cases are not identical, but together they make one point impossible to dismiss: The collision between court orders and college-sports governance is national. Louisiana did not invent it. Hayes dismisses its courts because their orders complicate his conclusion.

He makes an even more basic error with Sankey’s testimony, writing as though LSU questioned him about his salary and private-air travel to generate publicity. The athletes’ attorneys conducted that examination. Tony Clayton represents Luis, not LSU. The lawyers for Wright and Harris represent the players, not LSU. Their clients’ interests now conflict with LSU’s decision to comply with the SEC.

That became impossible to miss when Luis and his father instructed Clayton to sue LSU and Wade after Wade said he would follow SEC protocols and would not roster Luis.

Luis sued LSU because LSU complied with the SEC.

That fact demolishes Hayes’ presentation of one organized LSU-Louisiana campaign. LSU, Attorney General Liz Murrill, the athletes and their lawyers are separate parties with different duties and positions. Hayes assigns their conduct to LSU and calls the result a lack of institutional control. That is a false attribution at the center of his argument.

Hayes says LSU could have ended the matter by telling the athletes at the beginning that a roster spot is a privilege, not a legal right.

He is right that a judge can declare an athlete eligible without ordering a coach to play him. LSU controls its roster. But Clayton argues that the SEC used threats against LSU to make Luis’ court victory worthless. The conference did not have to overturn the order if it could make LSU too afraid to use him. Nor does roster discretion answer whether the SEC could punish LSU after Jorden prohibited it. Hayes brushes past both questions because he has already chosen a winner.

That presumption becomes explicit when he describes SEC governing authority with the phrase “punish bad actors.”

Who has legally established that LSU is a bad actor? Judge Axon has not ruled on the merits, the Nov. 18 hearing has not occurred and LSU is not rostering the disputed athletes. Hayes declares guilt before the court determines whether the SEC has presented a live controversy.

He also wrote that the other 15 presidents and chancellors would decide LSU’s punishment if the SEC wins in November, making Nov. 18 sound like a final trial followed by sentencing. It is not. The hearing involves threshold disputes including jurisdiction, standing, immunity and mootness. Even if the SEC survives dismissal, that would not automatically validate every policy, approve every penalty or authorize expulsion. The judge could issue a narrow procedural ruling, or the parties could settle. There is no responsible basis for presenting Nov. 18 as a guaranteed SEC victory followed by punishment.

Hayes’ discussion of Kiffin is just as careless. Kiffin has mocked the SEC, criticized officiating and suggested the league does not want LSU to win. Those comments may be foolish and may draw discipline. Rousse could tell him to stop. Hayes instead says Rousse should have threatened to fire Kiffin for cause, yet cites no provision in Kiffin’s seven-year, $91 million contract supporting that conclusion. Kiffin’s mouth raises the temperature. It does not establish federal jurisdiction, prove LSU violated an order or entitle the SEC to judgment.

Hayes does report one important fact: Multiple unnamed sources told USA TODAY Sports that the SEC is still considering expulsion and other punishment. LSU should take that seriously. Fifteen presidents and chancellors could inflict enormous damage. But a powerful organization’s continuing threat does not prove its target is guilty. It proves the threat remains.

The SEC has a legitimate institutional concern. Sixteen universities cannot easily conduct one competition if eligibility standards change from state to state and courtroom to courtroom. The conference says its members accepted common rules and that one school should not use athletes unavailable to the others.

That is the SEC’s strongest argument, and it deserves to be heard. It does not give the conference an unquestionable right to threaten a member after a judge forbade punishment, obtain compliance, sue anyway and cite the member’s defense as further misconduct.

The basic facts remain simple:

The SEC filed the Birmingham lawsuit. LSU did not.

The athletes’ lawyers questioned Sankey. LSU did not.

Wright, Harris and Luis are not on LSU’s rosters. LSU complied.

Nov. 18 is a hearing, not a final trial or a sentencing date.

Hayes cites no provision in Kiffin’s contract making criticism of the SEC grounds to fire him for cause.

Those are not hometown talking points. They are the facts Hayes’ argument cannot survive without changing.

Hayes says LSU played a dangerous game and now the bill is due.

The more accurate conclusion is that the SEC obtained LSU’s compliance and then chose to gamble its governing authority in federal court to secure protection against what LSU might do later.

If the conference loses, it could create a clearer path for member institutions and state officials to resist it.

The SEC chose the courtroom. The SEC chose the stakes. And the SEC—not LSU—is risking an adverse ruling that could limit the very power it went to court to protect.