If No. 16 LSU beats No. 14 Alabama on a Saturday night coming up in November, and Death Valley fans respond by rushing the field again, the Tigers’ athletic program would have to pay as much as 500,000 Crimson Tide dollars.

The high-stakes rivalry game on Nov. 9 could serve as the latest test of the Southeastern Conference’s home invasion policy that has been redone before the previous football season.

The goal was to stop such violations, but this season still saw a few — including at LSU when the Tigers defeated Mississippi in overtime on October 12. LSU had to pay $250,000 to the rebels. If it happens again, LSU will have paid a combined total of up to $750,000 to rival SEC athletic programs this football season alone.

While LSU coach Brian Kelly worries about safety when fans rush the field, he doesn’t seem overly concerned about fines — even in this NIL era, when schools are spending more on players than ever and likely would prefer not to be ordered to supplement. the athletic budgets of their SEC opponents.

“These types of penalties will probably be passed through the administration, and I just don’t see that affecting NIL to the point where there’s a competitive advantage,” Kelly said.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m advocating, but if you win every week and storm the field, your NIL will go up because you’ll generate a lot of support,” Kelly added. “I’m not trying to be a sage here about this, because it’s a serious matter.”

Kelly — who has experienced three home field invasions and two on the road since coming to LSU in 2022 — isn’t struggling with the current structure.

“There should be fines that you feel,” Kelly said. “And what you’re trying to do is your due diligence to make sure there’s increased security so you can prevent people from going into the field to the point where there’s a security risk.”

The fines cover football and basketball combined, and each program starts fresh every January 1st.

A first offense is $100,000, a second is $250,000, and goes up to a maximum of $500,000 for a third or subsequent offense.

LSU had to pay $100,000 for fans who rushed home court after a men’s basketball victory over Kentucky last february That’s why the payout to Ole Miss this football season was $250,000. But LSU also got $100,000 from Mississippi after lost to the Rebels at Oxford in 2023.

Meanwhile, fans rushed the field after Alabama losses at Vanderbilt and in Tennessee this season, and the Crimson Tide gets $100,000 from each program. Tennessee, meanwhile, is in the black right now because it got $250,000 from Arkansas after losing on the road to the Razorbacks on October 5.

While the invasions haven’t completely stopped, SEC officials have been pleased with the effort member schools have made to safely and quickly get visiting teams off the field as fans come over the walls. That, said SEC Associate Commissioner Herb Vincent, was a primary goal of the new policy.

“Our schools have increased focus to keep players and team personnel safe when it happens,” Vincent said. “The school’s game management staff in particular spent a lot of time developing effective strategies to get opposing teams and personnel off the field safely.”

Vincent attended the Ole Miss game at LSU and watched as security workers quickly ran ropes in front of the Rebels’ bench when the game-winning touchdown was scored in overtime, creating a brief buffer that helped Mississippi get to the locker room with limited fan interference.

First-year Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer, meanwhile, was pleased there were no significant incidents with his players at Vanderbilt or Tennessee.

“All it takes is one fan that’s a little over the top and connects with maybe one of our players that’s super excited, just put it all out on the field and you have a recipe for something that could go wrong,” DeBoer said. “Our guys did well when we were in those situations.”

While Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said the number of running-on-the-field incidents this season indicated current policies may not be working as well as intended, Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea took a more nuanced position.

“Fines are a deterrent and I support all of that,” Clark said, noting that he doesn’t think there’s “a place for fan involvement on the field because you’re jeopardizing the safety of the opposing team.”

“There aren’t many boundaries at those times and it’s very hard to sort things out,” he added.

However, when reflecting on the aftermath of Vanderbilt’s upset since then, No. 1 Alabama — when fans rushed the field, removed the goal posts, paraded them through Nashville and threw them into the Cumberland River — can’t help but feel good.

“That moment is very special and something I’ll always carry with me and I really don’t want it to go any other way, to be honest,” Clark said. “We need that as a community here. This community deserved this celebration. And yet I want to grow beyond that and I want to get to the point where we expect to be in those games and win them.”

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