{"id":374595,"date":"2025-12-28T19:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T19:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374595\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T19:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T19:14:08","slug":"diego-pavias-eligibility-lawsuit-cites-nba-draftee-returning-to-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374595\/","title":{"rendered":"Diego Pavia&#8217;s eligibility lawsuit cites NBA draftee returning to college"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-colleges \">A lawyer representing Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia in a legal filing argued that the NCAA\u2019s recent decision to allow a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/12\/26\/former-nba-draft-pick-commits-to-baylor-midseason\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/12\/26\/former-nba-draft-pick-commits-to-baylor-midseason\/\">2023 NBA draft pick to return to college<\/a> should \u201calso permit Pavia and more than two dozen other former junior college athletes like him to participate in NCAA football in 2026 and 2027.\u201d Even though Pavia \u201cplans to enter the 2026 NFL Draft, he is following through with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2024\/11\/10\/vanderbilt-diego-pavia-suing-ncaa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2024\/11\/10\/vanderbilt-diego-pavia-suing-ncaa\/\">lawsuit against the NCAA<\/a> that challenges the organization\u2019s policy of counting junior college seasons against Division I eligibility.\u201d Baylor on Wednesday announced that C James Nnaji, the 31st pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, will \u201cjoin the Bears after playing professional basketball in Spain and Turkey.\u201d He has yet to play in an NBA game or sign an NBA contract. Pavia\u2019s attorney Ryan Downton, in the briefing filed in federal court Friday in Nashville, argues that \u201cif athletes\u2019 years of prior professional experience don\u2019t count against their eligibility, then athletes\u2019 previous JUCO experience also shouldn\u2019t count\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6921697\/2025\/12\/27\/diego-pavia-ncaa-elibigility-lawsuit-poem\/ \" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6921697\/2025\/12\/27\/diego-pavia-ncaa-elibigility-lawsuit-poem\/ \">THE ATHLETIC, 12\/27<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lawyer representing Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia in a legal filing argued that the NCAA\u2019s recent decision to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[6655,355,398,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-374595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-legal","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}