Getty Image / Jonathan Bachman
While the college football season will officially begin tomorrow, there are many fans who are already looking forward to next weekend when they will have a full slate of games to enjoy.
In particular a lot of those will probably already be thinking about next week’s matchup between the LSU Tigers and Florida State Seminoles.
It’s the first matchup of the season that will feature a pair of teams ranked in the top 10 and is one of the highlights of this year’s non-conference schedule.
For LSU, it will also be a game that they will head into without one of their stars.
5-star defensive tackle Maason Smith is suspended for the game.
He will be serving a one-game suspension for stemming from an autograph signing back in 2021.
It turns out that the LSU Tigers tried to get creative to make Smith available for the game.
In an interview with Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger, LSU coach Brian Kelly revealed that the program tried to move one of their games to Week 0 so that Smith could serve the suspension against another opponent.
LSU exhausted all options in DT Maason Smith case, including playing on Week 0, Brian Kelly tells @YahooSports.
Smith’s suspension v FSU stems from 2021 autograph-signing, ~1 month before NIL was legalized. On appeal, NCAA told LSU: No grandfather clause https://t.co/GuIByq69Jf
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) August 25, 2023
“We looked at all the options out there, certainly, and wanted to make sure that we examined everything that was possible,” Kelly said. “We looked at everything. We looked at a Week 0 game to bring in another opponent prior to Florida State. We looked at every imaginable option, but time ran out.”
Unfortunately for the Tigers, they weren’t able to find a way to make sure Maason Smith would be eligible to take on the Seminoles and now they’ll have to take on one of their toughest opponents of the year without him.