Ole Miss Sues Two Former Players Who Followed Lane Kiffin to LSU for $950,000 in Buyouts

Ole Miss filed lawsuits Tuesday against two former football players who transferred to LSU, seeking nearly $1 million combined over buyout clauses the school says the players never paid.

The complaints, filed in Lafayette County Circuit Court, target defensive end Princewill Umanmielen and offensive lineman Devin Harper. Ole Miss is seeking $550,000 from Umanmielen and $400,000 from Harper, according to SuperTalk Mississippi. Both players signed revenue-sharing agreements with the university that included buyout provisions requiring payment if they left before fulfilling their commitment.

Both players ended up at LSU, now coached by Lane Kiffin, who left Ole Miss for the Tigers job in the middle of the Rebels' first-ever College Football Playoff appearance. Ole Miss lost to Miami in the Fiesta Bowl. Kiffin's abrupt departure has already strained the relationship between the two programs, according to Sports Illustrated, and now that tension has moved from message boards into a courtroom.

The Timeline Ole Miss Laid Out

According to SuperTalk Mississippi, Ole Miss's filing lays out a detailed timestamp trail. Umanmielen signed his revenue-sharing agreement with Ole Miss at 10:02 p.m. on January 3, two days after the Rebels beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Seventeen days later, he entered the transfer portal. One day after that, he signed with LSU.

Ole Miss says it first contacted Umanmielen about the buyout on January 22, the day after he signed with the Tigers. A 30-day deadline notice followed on February 22. On March 12, Ole Miss reached out directly to LSU requesting payment on Umanmielen's behalf. LSU denied that payment on March 18, according to Ole Miss's account relayed by SuperTalk.

That denial matters. LSU is permitted to cover a player's buyout, but doing so counts against the school's revenue-sharing cap, which Ole Miss says sits above $21 million for the next academic year. LSU apparently decided it wasn't worth eating that cap space to cover someone else's contract obligation.

Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter said earlier in July that both players had gone roughly six months without paying what they owed, according to WBRZ. That's the six-month runway that led to Tuesday's filing.

Ole Miss's Position

The university's statement, cited by Fox News and Sports Illustrated, is blunt: "The University of Mississippi values its student-athletes and is committed to honoring all obligations made to them. In return, the university expects that same commitment from its student-athletes and their representatives in upholding their contracts."

Ole Miss added that it "attempted to amicably resolve this matter prior to filing" and framed the lawsuits as consistent with how other schools are handling the same problem across college sports.

If revenue-sharing agreements are real contracts with real buyout clauses, and schools can't enforce them, the whole system becomes optional the moment a better offer shows up. Ole Miss argues it's just holding players to the same terms Nashville lawyers wrote and both sides signed.

The Other Side of It

The strongest pushback here isn't from any specific source defending the players, but the obvious tension in the arrangement itself. These are 20 and 21-year-old athletes navigating a wildly new legal landscape where revenue-sharing contracts function like pro sports deals, but without the players having their own agents and unions built out the way professional leagues do. Umanmielen signed his agreement at 10:02 p.m., two days after a Sugar Bowl win, before entering the portal 17 days later. Whether that timeline reflects genuine deliberation or a rushed signature under emotional circumstances is something a Mississippi judge will now have to weigh.

In many similar transfer situations, the new school picks up the buyout tab for the player, according to Fox News. LSU chose not to here, at least according to Ole Miss's version of events, which pushed the debt back onto the players themselves rather than the program that recruited them.

Umanmielen was the No. 1 ranked defensive end in the transfer portal at the time of his LSU commitment, according to On3's rankings, cited by WBRZ. He'd broken out in his lone season at Ole Miss with 45 tackles, nine sacks, an interception and a pass deflection after transferring in from Nebraska.

Neither Umanmielen nor Harper has issued a public response to the lawsuits as of this reporting, and LSU has not commented publicly on Ole Miss's claim that it declined to cover the buyout.

Ole Miss and LSU are scheduled to play each other later this season, a matchup that was already loaded with subtext given Kiffin's departure. Now it comes with an active courtroom dispute layered on top. How a Lafayette County judge handles two active NCAA transfer contracts, both signed within weeks of the players changing schools, will be watched closely by athletic departments nationwide trying to figure out whether revenue-sharing buyouts actually hold up in court.