Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia can’t be stopped. But what about his court battle with the NCAA?

One of the MVPs of Vanderbilt’s impressive encore to its surprisingly successful 2024 season is a 56-year-old federal judge and former Marine who went to law school at the University of Alabama.

William L. Campbell Jr., chief judge of the Middle District of Tennessee, in December ruled Diego Pavia should be allowed to play for the Commodores this season when by NCAA rule the quarterback had exhausted his eligibility.

Pavia is now a Heisman Trophy contender, and Vanderbilt is ranked No. 16 in the country heading into its game Saturday against No. 10 Alabama, a rematch of last year’s stunning upset in Nashville.

Pavia, 24, sued the NCAA after last season, challenging rules that counted his two seasons in junior college against his NCAA clock and saying that it unfairly limited his opportunity to earn money off his name, image and likeness.

The case isn’t over. Far from it. But Campbell granted Pavia’s request for a preliminary injunction, saying he should be allowed to keep playing while the case made its way through the court system. The NCAA responded by appealing the ruling and then granting a waiver to permit athletes with the same circumstances as Pavia to also compete this season. An appellate court has yet to rule on the appeal.

Still, the initial ruling in the Pavia case paved the way for dozens more legal challenges to NCAA eligibility rules, which allow athletes to compete without restrictions for four seasons over five years they are enrolled in school.

So far, the NCAA has been winning way more than it’s losing in court.

According to the NCAA, of the 35 eligibility lawsuits filed:

19 preliminary injunctions have been denied.
seven injunctions have been granted.
four are still pending in the lower courts.
five have been voluntarily dismissed prior to a decision on the preliminary injunction.

Still, it’s not a great place for college sports to be. The lawsuits create uncertainty for the athletes and teams directly affected, as well as others who believe the next ruling could impact them.

Rutgers leading tackler Jett Elad, who played juco ball but was not covered by the Pavia waiver, is also eligible thanks to a preliminary injunction granted in a different court. However, a pending appeal could send him back to the sideline if a ruling were to come down during the season.

Wisconsin defensive back Nyzier Fourqurean was deemed ineligible after practicing with the team all offseason because another appellate court ruled in favor of the NCAA in that suit, which makes the case that Fourqurean’s time playing in Division II should not count toward D-I eligibility.

The lawyer working with Pavia filed another lawsuit in September on behalf of several of Pavia’s teammates who are claiming they should be allowed a fifth year of eligibility even after taking a redshirt year. Attorney Ryan Downton is trying to expedite that case because his clients need to know whether they can play next season before the NCAA’s January transfer portal window for major college football players opens.

“The courts are literally all over the map on this,” said Tulane sports law professor Gabe Feldman. “The courts have reached many different conclusions based in part on the factual situation of the athletes involved — whether they were at juco or NAIA or redshirted in some cases. In some cases the factual difference is dictating a different outcome in a case. In other cases different perspectives on the deference that should be afforded the NCAA is making a difference. And in other cases it’s differing perspective on the application of antitrust law more generally that is making the difference.”

None of these lawsuits take direct aim at eliminating college sports eligibility standards altogether.

Aside from the four-to-play-five rule, the NCAA does have a waiver process to allow for exceptions, typically for athletes requesting extra eligibility to make up for years lost to injury or health issues. There was some discussion within NCAA membership about a year ago to consider revisions to the eligibility rules, such as granting all athletes five seasons to play unrestricted, while eliminating redshirts and waivers.

Nothing ever formally moved forward, and the current rule was written into the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit settlement as further evidence Division I schools would like to keep it the way it is.

The chipping away of those rules does, however, highlight the NCAA’s vulnerability and show why college sports leaders are so desperate for help from Congress in the form of a federal law with some antitrust protection.

“I think aside from federal legislation or collective bargaining, there is not a silver bullet here,” said Sam Ehrlich, a professor at Boise State’s college of business and economics and creator of the the College Sports Litigation Tracker website. “There’s not a rule change that the NCAA can make on their own that they could know for sure would satisfy potential plaintiffs in this case and potential judges in these cases.”

At the core of these lawsuits is a key question.

“The NCAA’s position is, eligibility is not commercial, so it’s exempt from antitrust challenge,” Downton said. “Players’ perspective is: Eligibility is directly tied to whether we can make money playing football or not. So you can’t get any more commercial than that, and it’s subject to antitrust review.”

The NCAA’s position is drawn from past precedent, and a few judges have agreed. As college sports have become more professionalized, with many athletes earning thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars through NIL deals and a new revenue sharing system, other judges have not.

But that hasn’t been all bad news for the NCAA, either. Even if eligibility rules are subject to antitrust laws, that doesn’t preclude the NCAA from having rules and limitations as long as they do not unfairly restrict competition.

Ehrlich said even though the Pavia ruling was narrow, it led to a surge of lawsuits from athletes looking to plead their cases for another year of eligibility. That has slowed now.

“I think the biggest fear for the NCAA right now is that appellate court rules against them and leads to a further flood of lawsuits,” he said.

Ehrlich stressed none of the lawsuits seek to toss out all eligibility requirements.

“I really push back on a lot of people who are kind of framing these lawsuits as kind of the end of eligibility rules and the end of the NCAA’s ability to control eligibility at all,” he said. “Having 35-year-olds after their NFL career going back to college, that’s not the case. That’s not what any of these plaintiffs are arguing for. Maybe that’s something that gets filed eventually. But right now, we haven’t seen that.”

Yet.

Feldman said the NCAA has lived on a slippery legal slope, where it often concedes or is forced to concede on an issue, opening the door to another potential antitrust lawsuit.

“Every time they try to increase benefits … that gets used against them by saying, ‘If you’re willing to give (the athletes) this, why can’t you give them more?’” Feldman said. “I do think there’s a lot at stake here not only for the juco players, but for what might come next and how this might be used to further claw away the NCAA’s power.”

It could be months if not years before the long-term ramifications of Pavia’s lawsuit are known, but thanks to Judge Campbell’s ruling nine and a half months ago, Vanderbilt has a legitimate chance for its first two-game winning streak against Alabama in almost 70 years.

(Photo: Johnnie Izquierdo / Getty Images)