Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney called the influx of former NFL players onto college football rosters "embarrassing" and a "joke" — and he's naming the real villains: the judges who keep overriding the rules everyday people agreed to follow.

The flashpoint is LSU, where new head coach Lane Kiffin is actively recruiting former pros ahead of Clemson's season opener Saturday night. Former Cleveland Browns tight end Dae'Quan Wright is already practicing in Baton Rouge. Defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and defensive back Blake Cotton — both cut from NFL clubs this offseason — are in the mix too. Whether any of them actually suit up remains undecided, pending court challenges to the rules barring them.

And that's the core of the corruption. All Power Four conferences and three Group of Six conferences voted to keep pro players out of college football. The schools, the conferences, the presidents — they made a rule. Then somebody ran to a judge to nullify it. "When you enforce rules, somebody just goes and finds a judge to say, 'No, you can't enforce that rule,'" Swinney said. "Never did I think I'd be living in an era like this … but that's where we are."

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian went further, calling it "morally wrong" to bump a college student who's been grinding for nine months just to make room for someone who already signed a professional contract and couldn't stick on an NFL roster. "The fact that somebody out there is going to take a player out off an NFL roster and tell somebody who's been doing it for nine months to go kick rocks — that doesn't sit well with me," Sarkisian said. Northwestern's David Braun echoed Swinney, saying he looks forward to "consistency and common sense prevailing."

Kiffin's defense is the corporatist's playbook: if players are getting paid like professionals, then teams should be able to make late roster additions like professionals. "This is how the real world works," he declared Monday. Kiffin framed his decision as being in "the best interest of the players that sit in this team room and not for my reputation." MassLive reported Kiffin said his LSU players want the former pros to join the team.

Swinney made clear he doesn't blame the players themselves for trying to keep their careers alive after getting cut. His beef is with a system that has lost the ability to govern itself — and with the legal infrastructure that keeps overriding the will of the people who actually run the sport.

The rot goes deeper than just the NFL returnees. Rosters across the country are also adding players who sued to challenge the NCAA's new 5-in-5 eligibility rule, which excluded members of the high school Class of 2022 from an extra year. Former Notre Dame defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka is expected to be available for LSU this weekend through that loophole. Swinney joked that his staff has had to study NFL preseason film to prepare.

An injunction hearing is set for Baton Rouge, with Friday as the deadline for SEC teams to set their 105-man rosters before Saturday's openers.

The question isn't whether Kiffin is exploiting every available angle — of course he is. The question is what's left of college football when the rules are whatever a judge says they are on any given Tuesday, and when "the real world" means a kid who earned his spot gets told to kick rocks so a washed-out pro can take it.