LSU Makes Decision on Sam Leavitt Amid Controversial Injury Status for Ole Miss Game

Sam Leavitt appeared to have a very quick injury turnaround at the end of the week before LSU goes on the road against Ole Miss.

LSU’s quarterback was removed from the team’s SEC football availability report on Friday night, which would seem to indicate that he is ready to start for the Tigers’ offense against the Rebels on Saturday night.

Controversy around Sam Leavitt’s status

LSU Makes Decision on Sam Leavitt Amid Controversial Injury Status for Ole Miss Game — USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Leavitt was originally listed as doubtful on LSU’s first injury report on Wednesday with an upper body injury in a surprising development heading into a matchup already loaded with drama as Lane Kiffin prepares to make his return to Oxford.

But not everyone believed what LSU was saying. In fact, few did.

Leavitt’s declared injury status came despite the quarterback not visibly appearing to have suffered a very serious ailment in LSU’s win against Louisiana Tech last weekend, inspiring widespread criticism and speculation that Kiffin’s program was actually engaging in a little gamesmanship to misdirect Ole Miss’ attention.

Ole Miss never bought it

It’s not out of the ordinary that a quarterback can suffer an injury in a game and not show obvious symptoms, but the moment Leavitt appeared on the availability report, everyone at Ole Miss was convinced they were being played by Kiffin.

“No one on the Ole Miss staff is convinced LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt’s appearance as doubtful on the injury report is sincere,” ESPN college football reporter Pete Thamel said, and indeed you would be hard-pressed to find anyone outside Louisiana who did.

Can the SEC punish LSU for lying?

Reporting policy in the conference states that acts of gamesmanship “intended to hide a student-athlete’s true participation status for competitive or strategic reasons” is strictly disallowed, as is a team doing anything that could be construed as misleading.

Penalties for false or late injury reports start at $25,000 for a first offense and can go as high as $100,000 and may also include “accountability measures” for head coaches, with SEC commissioner Greg Sankey given considerable leeway to apply penalties.

It’s not like Kiffin doesn’t have some history fudging availability reports, including when he was at Ole Miss, with analysis from CBS Sports’ Bud Elliott noting that whenever the coach would list a player as doubtful – which by rule gives them a 25 percent chance of playing – they would play that week 13 out of 14 times over a two-year period.

While the SEC relies on a mixture of compliance monitoring and medical documentation reviews to prove gamesmanship on availability reports, coming up with actual proof of stretching a player’s designation is notoriously difficult. Instead, it’ll likely go down as another example of Lane Being Lane to go with the rest of the list.

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