The NCAA approved what it called a more contemporary and clean eligibility model in June 2026. The clock would now begin at full-time enrollment or the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever came first, and athletes would have five years to finish five seasons of competition. It took the place of a system that was complicated by COVID-related exceptions, redshirt extensions, and injury waivers. The concept was straightforward. What came next was not at all like that.
The structure of the rule was not its main flaw. It was the deadline. The Class of 2022 athletes, who had just finished their customary four years of eligibility, were completely excluded from the new framework because the NCAA only applied the new model to athletes who graduated from high school in 2023 and later. The group contended that granting veterans additional years would be more detrimental than excluding them and that allowing the Class of 2022 to remain on would displace incoming recruits. On paper, that calculation was defensible, but in federal court, it was not well received.
Almost immediately after, a basketball player named Brock Wisne filed a federal class-action lawsuit, claiming the NCAA had broken antitrust laws. He was supported by a Denver judge, which allowed athletes from the Class of 2022 to return, but only to their former schools. That decision was temporarily overturned by an appeals court. After hearing arguments, a three-judge panel from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed dubious of the plaintiffs’ position but refrained from making a decision right away. The win, pause, appeal, skepticism, and silence sequence alone encapsulates the pace and clarity of this entire legal situation, which is to say, slow and incredibly ambiguous.
The next development in college sports litigation is likely what attorneys refer to as the “find a local judge” era. Athletes filed lawsuits in county and state courts across the nation. Judges in at least ten of the 26 eligibility cases that had been filed in US courts by mid-October had issued restraining orders or injunctions in favor of the players. Six weeks into the season, a judge in Michigan gave the go-ahead for two University of Michigan football players to start.
Basketball player RJ Luis was given eligibility by a Louisiana court, but LSU refused to sign him, which prompted the Southeastern Conference to file a lawsuit against the university. These are not examples of edge cases. College athletics now operate in this setting.
Ohio had the most notable development. Regardless of NCAA regulations, Ohio’s public and private universities are permitted to allow Class of 2022 athletes to play a fifth year thanks to an executive order signed by Governor Mike DeWine.
The NCAA filed a lawsuit against him three days later. Charlie Baker, the president of the NCAA, described it as a “extraordinary step,” claiming that DeWine was attempting to give Ohio schools a competitive edge that athletes from other states would not have. According to the lawsuit, the governor gave Ohio institutions “a hall pass to break the rules.” DeWine’s office did not reply right away. Once more, the athletes involved had to wait longer as the Ohio Supreme Court intervened and halted a lower court decision while requesting briefs from both parties.
Danny White, the athletic director at Tennessee, reacted to all of this on social media with three words: “This whole thing has become comical.” That assessment is difficult to dispute. Basketball teams are getting ready for a season that starts in November, but they are unsure if some of the players on their rosters will be allowed to play. Football teams are still adding players under court orders even though the season is already halfway over. A detail that would have seemed unattainable two years ago is that the transfer portal has temporarily reopened in at least some cases due to judicial orders.
Watching this unfold gives the impression that the NCAA’s decision to bar the Class of 2022 was the kind of policy decision that appears reasonable in a boardroom but is disastrous in a court of law. The athletes who were excluded did not request preferential treatment. They were requesting benefits from a rule that altered the terms after the previous one had already influenced their careers. It is genuinely unclear if courts will eventually accept that argument in its entirety. There is no doubt that whoever files the next motion will now have significant control over college athletics.
