The Ole Miss Rebels controversially brought back Trinidad Chambliss for the 2026 season after a University of Mississippi judge at the Calhoun County Courthouse in Pittsboro, MS, granted him a retroactive redshirt for one of his non-active years with the Division II Ferris State Bulldogs.
According to USA Today's Matt Hayes, several SEC schools, if not all of them, including the Auburn Tigers, might be in support of Ole Miss and would protest the NCAA if they were to take retaliatory action against the Rebs.
The goal, as Hayes writes, would be for the SEC to split away from the rest of College Football and stage their own playoff on ESPN; six teams in the playoffs with a first-round byes for the top two seeds.
"One would think, in that specific scenario, the SEC presidents would step in and say Chambliss is ineligible and any game he plays is forfeited by Ole Miss. But there’s a teeny-weeny problem with that," Hayes wrote.
"The remaining 15 members of the SEC, or even a majority, may actually support Ole Miss and its fight against the NCAA. They may take a stand, too, because they want the ultimate payoff: a league of their own.
"No more bickering with the Big Ten about some dopey 24-team playoff, no more adhering to make it up as you go along enforcement from the NCAA. Just the SEC, its own rulebook and television partner (ESPN) ― and a fat revenue-generating playoff of its own."
There's never been a worse time for the SEC to split from the NCAA
Greg Sankey may want to hold his horses before considering any such moves. After three straight championships for the Big Ten, where not a single title game had an SEC program in it, now's so not the time for an independent "It Just Means More" conference.
It won't mean more if the SEC ditched the B1G. It'd mean that they took their ball and went home, ignoring most of the country in the process. In a world where there are calls to divide this country by all sorts of arbitrary lines, this would only further that schism.
Luckily, at least in this case, profits will always dictate college sports. With outrage over the Alabama Crimson Tide considering cancelling their home-and-home series with the Ohio State Buckeyes, it appears that there's still a market for cross-country, non-conference clashes of titans.
Consider an independent SEC a far-out theory at this point. There's simply too much money in early-season dream matches between programs that don't usually play each other. That rings true for the CFP, too.