COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – As many as 77 Texas A&M athletes could receive an extra year of eligibility thanks to a pair of court injunctions issued Friday in Colorado and Tennessee.<\/p>\n
Among those who could have the option for another season are football players Amari Niblack, Jered Kerr and Le\u2019Veon Moss.<\/p>\n
Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado issued a class-action injunction <\/a>that granted athletes who entered college in the 2022-23 season and have used four years of eligibility an additional year in the 2026-27 academic year, should they choose to use it.<\/p>\n The injunction comes from a lawsuit challenging the NCAA\u2019s new age-based eligibility rules, which give athletes five years to complete five seasons of eligibility, eliminating redshirts and the waiver process for added eligibility. Athletes who just completed their fourth season of eligibility in four years were not grandfathered into the new system.<\/p>\n The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, all athletes who began their college careers in the 2022-23 academic year, successfully argued that the NCAA violated antitrust law by excluding them from the new eligibility rules, Sweeney said.<\/p>\n The class for the injunction was defined as \u201cAll persons in the United States who began to play in collegiate sports in the 2022\u20132023 season, competed in NCAA Division I sports, and completed four years of eligibility as defined by the NCAA\u2019s prior rules by the conclusion of the 2025\u20132026 season, and are therefore barred from playing a fifth season due to the NCAA\u2019s adoption and immediate implementation of the Five-Year Eligibility Rule,\u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n Davidson County Chancery Court Chancellor I\u2019Ashea Myles issued a separate injunction Friday<\/a> that granted 30 basketball players a fifth season of eligibility and ruled that a transfer portal window for these fifth-year athletes should open from Aug. 3 to Aug. 10.<\/p>\n KBTX reached out to several former A&M athletes who met the criteria of the injunction and expressed initial interest in pursuing another year of competition.<\/p>\n However, several challenges remain for those athletes.<\/p>\n The House v. NCAA settlement, which serves as guardrails for college athletics at the moment, requires teams to stay under sports-specific roster limits. For fall and even some winter sports, those roster spots could already be filled with transfer portal additions and incoming freshmen. These newly-eligible athletes would have to use the transfer portal to find a program that still has space.<\/p>\n For football athletes, including Niblack and Moss for A&M, it is unclear if there is a path to return to college sports after entering their names in the NFL draft. Niblack went undrafted in the 2026 draft. Moss also went undrafted, but was signed as a free agent by the Miami Dolphins. He retired four days after he signed with the franchise. Moss was arrested by Baton Rouge police on July 20 on a charge of felony cruelty to juveniles after his 2-year-old son accidentally shot himself with a gun that was unsecured under Moss\u2019s pillow, according to police records.<\/p>\n Finally, the passage of the Protect College Sports Act could nullify both injunctions. On Friday, after the injunctions were issued, both the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference voted to approve the act after weeks of negotiating certain aspects of the bill. The approval by both key conferences was confirmed on social media by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who co-authored the bill.<\/p>\n It\u2019s official. The @thebigten<\/a> and the @SEC<\/a> have endorsed the Protect College Sports Act. Glad to have their support.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s time to get the bill through Congress and on to President Trump\u2019s desk. Let\u2019s save college sports.<\/p>\n