Finally had a chance to look at this. Here is some Texas law context . . . An ex parte TRO is pretty easy to obtain. The real test is whether you can keep it after the other side appears. Reminder: we saw that in Waco two weeks ago. Tulsa National Little League was disqualified for using an ineligible player. The team obtained an emergency TRO reinstating it and ordering another Southwest Region championship game. Little League appeared the next day with its evidence and moved to dissolve. The judge dissolved the TRO, the disqualification stood, and Boerne advanced to Williamsport. The Dallas order here is also ex parte which means the NCAA, SEC, and Greg Sankey were not heard. It is not a ruling on the merits. It is a 14-day emergency order entered after hearing only the athletes’ presentation. FWIW, this one goes extraordinarily far. It effectively gives 41 plaintiffs another season, reopens the transfer portal, overrides NCAA and SEC rules, protects schools and coaches from penalties, commands nonparty institutions to act, and requires the NCAA and SEC to obtain the judge’s permission before declaring a plaintiff ineligible for any other reason. Texas procedure allows the defendants to move to dissolve it on two days’ notice. There are many defects here, but given the order’s failure to identify the irreparable injury or explain why notice could not be provided--as Texas Rule 680 expressly requires--they have substantial grounds to do exactly that. The Little League case is a useful reminder: the first TRO headline often tells you little more than who reached the courthouse first.

I'm going to try to explain why this is 🦇💩 in sports terms (I won't cite a single case). Let's take Tony Clayton’s theory and run it out with a slightly different hypothetical. A Baton Rouge judge enters a TRO prohibiting the NCAA from enforcing its rules to deny LSU a shot at the national championship (caveat: at this point, not so far fetched). The SEC then applies its own, independently adopted rules and declares Vanderbilt the conference champion (too absurd?). Has the SEC violated the NCAA injunction because its decision makes LSU’s national-title claim harder -- or even impossible? No. An injunction does not bind everyone connected to the defendant. It binds the people and organizations actually covered by the order, plus others who are helping them evade it. That distinction matters. The SEC is not the NCAA. The NCAA does not write SEC rules. It does not run the SEC. And the fact that SEC schools belong to the NCAA does not magically turn the conference into the NCAA’s agent. There is a different argument that could matter. If the NCAA told the SEC, “The judge says we can’t do this, so you do it for us,” and the SEC agreed, that could be a problem. But you would have to prove that actually happened. You don’t get there simply by saying, “LSU is an NCAA member.” Otherwise, one state judge could effectively dictate decisions to hundreds of colleges and every major conference in the country without those schools or conferences ever being sued or having a chance to be heard. And imagine where that leads. A Louisiana judge says LSU wins. An Alabama judge says Alabama wins. Maybe a Texas judge says A&M wins. If Clayton thinks the SEC itself violated Louisiana law, there’s an obvious way to handle that: sue the SEC. Looks like he's doing that (good luck). Let the SEC show up, defend itself, and let a court decide the actual dispute. What you cannot do is sue the NCAA and then treat the resulting injunction like it automatically governs everyone else in college sports.