Coaches in multiple sports have long wanted the NCAA to allow athletes to have five years to play five seasons. They didn’t want to worry about medical hardship waivers that may or may not be granted. They didn’t want to worry about players opting out before they reached some arbitrary magic number of games played, so the player could redshirt.
It was a common-sense solution that would have been easy to implement, say, in 2010. That was back when the NCAA wasn’t a punching bag for antitrust attorneys across the country, but the school presidents and athletic directors resisted — just as they routinely resisted nearly every move that (at the time) could be characterized as pro-athlete.
Now, those constituencies have finally come around. Except this time, the common-sense solution may be significantly more expensive to implement. If it can be implemented at all.
Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports reported Wednesday that the NCAA Division I cabinet will discuss a five-to-play-five rule as soon as next week. If the measure passes through the legislative process, it might go into effect as early as the academic year that begins in August.
It is an attempt by the schools to slow the flood of eligibility lawsuits as athletes — who have been allowed to get paid since 2021 — try to extend their eligibility clocks to earn more revenue share and NIL money. And it is probably the best idea the schools have come up with since they began losing antitrust suits, because there is at least a puncher’s chance that it might not get ripped to shreds in federal court.
The price of admission could be settling a not-yet-filed class action suit, but at this point, writing one check might be cheaper than treating the thousands of potential paper cuts that will come if the schools leave their eligibility rules as currently written. No matter what, this will be messy. The people running college sports know everything will be messy absent congressional intervention or a collective bargaining agreement. They’ll probably get dragged kicking and screaming into the latter when the former ultimately doesn’t happen, but until then, they’ll keep throwing different potential solutions against the wall.
As those go, five-to-play-five is probably worth a shot. The only reason they haven’t done it already is the fear of lawsuits from NIL-era athletes who were allowed only four years of competition. Depending on how the initial stages of such a case go, the NCAA might have to stroke a check to settle that dispute. But then it might find it easier to defend its new rules.
Why? While the NCAA has lost nearly every decision regarding athlete compensation or transfer rules, its recent record in federal cases challenging eligibility rules is above .500. Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss went to state court to get an injunction that will allow him to play another season, but this rule would have eliminated the possibility of Chambliss winning the injunction.
The reason Chambliss won the injunction — and would stand a good chance of winning his case if he needed anything more than the injunction to play this season — is that he sued in state court over the NCAA’s uneven application of its rules regarding medical hardship waivers. Under current NCAA rules, an athlete who has redshirted can be granted an additional year (or years) of competition if they prove they were medically unable to compete. Chambliss’ attorneys argued that the decision to deny his request for a hardship for his 2022 season was arbitrary and capricious.
Chambliss didn’t challenge the rule itself. He challenged the application of the rule. And anyone who has followed medical hardship cases through the years knows the application has been uneven. Because direct challenges to the eligibility rules have been rebuffed in some cases, this is likely where athletes will attack from now on as they try to extend their eligibility clocks. Under the proposed rule, a player in Chambliss’ situation would have had five seasons (2021-25) to play, and his eligibility would have expired. There would have been no waiver to seek and thus no waiver process to challenge.
The only waivers offered under the proposed rule would be for mission work, military service and maternity leave. Those are fairly cut-and-dried situations that leave little room for interpretation.
The piece of the rule that likely would be challenged first is the age limit. According to the proposal, players would have five years following their 19th birthday or their high school graduation. Only one of those three instances in the previous paragraph could delay or pause the clock.
The arbitrary age could be ripe for a challenge, but the NCAA could ditch the number and keep the current clock starter (first enrollment in college). That would barely affect football. Most football players are Americans who went to American high schools, and taking time off between high school and college likely wouldn’t help a player earn more money. The age limit seems to be a nod to basketball, where college teams now take European players in their early-to-mid 20s who have gone through the club system and essentially played several years of pro ball before entering college.
The five-for-five rule might hold up in court. While judges never bought the NCAA’s argument that consumers would like the product of college sports less if the players got paid, they seem more amenable to an argument that uncapped eligibility could harm consumer demand. That could give the NCAA a chance.
The system does need some rules, and ultimately it will have them through a law or through a CBA. Until one of those happens, a semblance of structure would be helpful. And this could provide a little structure.
If the people running college sports had just listened to their coaches, they’d have had that structure about 20 years ago and they wouldn’t have to pay so much to make it and defend it now.