College football has plenty of chaos. It’s about to have a little more.
Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, who led the Rebels to the CFP semifinal, will initiate a lawsuit this week in an effort to secure a sixth year of eligibility.
Via Pete Thamel of ESPN.com, Chambliss has hired a prominent Mississippi law firm, with ties to the Ole Miss NIL collective, to file suit in Mississippi on Chambliss’s behalf.
Lawyer Tom Mars said the complaint will be filed later this week, with an effort to secure both a preliminary and permanent injunction forcing the NCAA to give Chambliss another year. On Friday, the NCAA issued a statement denying a sixth season. The NCAA concluded that insufficient medical documentation had been provided to support the request.
Given Chambliss’s plan to remain at Ole Miss, his lawyers undoubtedly plan to file suit in Mississippi because of the inherent home-court advantage to having a Mississippi judge, elected by Mississippi residents, decide the case. One of Chambliss’s lawyers, Tom Mars, actually called it a “level playing field” in Mississippi; it’s anything but. Which is why they’ll be filing suit there.
Also, if the goal is get a court order requiring the NCAA to give Chambliss an immediate waiver pending the resolution of the lawsuit, why weren’t they ready to file the moment the NCAA declined the request? The longer it takes to get the paperwork together for what seems to be a fairly straightforward factual issue, the harder it is to make the case that a sufficient emergency exists to justify relief ASAFP.
“We expect the lawsuit to be far more detailed and documented than other eligibility lawsuits that have been filed in the past year,” Mars told Thamel on Sunday. “Therefore, considerable work needs to be done before we’ll be prepared to seek an injunction that would allow Trinidad to play next season.”
The more detailed the documentation, the harder it will be to persuade a judge that the eventual outcome is sufficiently clear to justify immediate relief. The longer the wait to file, the harder it will be to prove that justice requires a ruling right now.
Of course, that may not matter. Filing the case in Mississippi could make all the difference, because Mississippi interests will want to see Chambliss get another year.
Regardless of how it turns out, the case is just another example of the stewards of college football getting the chaos they deserve, after years of hiding behind “NCAA rules” that allowed them to exploit players in violation of federal antitrust laws.