{"id":96815,"date":"2025-08-20T12:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/96815\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T12:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:45:08","slug":"ucla-usc-football-players-denied-by-judge-in-bid-to-keep-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/96815\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA, USC Football Players Denied by Judge in Bid to Keep Playing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThree seasoned players who hoped to play an additional year beyond their NCAA<\/a> eligibility lost their bid for an injunction on Monday, as a federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif., reasoned that college sports eligibility rules fall outside the scope of antitrust<\/a> scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the latest decision in what has become a series of conflicting court rulings about whether relatively older college athletes suffer the kind of legal injury that antitrust law ought to remedy. These players have been denied the chance to play another season to earn NIL<\/a> income and better position themselves for a pro league draft, but they are excluded based on rules that attempt to link the ordinary academic progress of a college student with the student\u2019s athletics eligibility and that try to insulate college sports from morphing into something akin to minor league sports.<\/p>\n

\n\tWould-be University of San Diego Toreros linebacker Jagger Giles, would-be UCLA<\/a> wide receiver Kaedin Robinson and would-be USC<\/a> Trojans lineman DJ Wingfield recently sued the NCAA<\/a>. They have all played at multiple colleges and argue that they should be able to keep playing past the NCAA\u2019s five-year eligibility rule. The NCAA\u2019s policy limits athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition\u2014including JUCO competition\u2014in any one sport within a five-year window. Giles, Robinson and Wingfield insist they\u2019re part of a labor market for D-I football, which reflects the opportunity to sign NIL deals and, with the\u00a0House\u00a0settlement, receive revenue shares.<\/p>\n

\n\tU.S. District Judge James V. Selna disagreed with the trio. He noted that antitrust law governs rules that concern commercial activity, such as a rule that limits NIL opportunities, education-related compensation or some other topic \u201cwhere an economic exchange is at the heart of the rule.\u201d Selna reasoned that NCAA eligibility rules are likely a \u201ctrue\u201d eligibility rule, meaning one that\u2019s not about compensation and thus isn\u2019t within the reach of antitrust law. The judge wrote that the five-year rule \u201cdoes not regulate any sort of labor for in-kind compensation\u201d and instead has a \u201csimple\u201d purpose: capping the number of years that athletes can participate in college sports.<\/p>\n

\n\tSelna also wasn\u2019t persuaded by the fact that other college athletes, including Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia and Rutgers cornerback Jett Elad, have thus far succeeded in bringing extremely similar lawsuits. Those decisions were in other federal circuits and therefore don\u2019t bind Selna.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo that point, the limiting role of jurisdiction in the U.S. legal system has played an instrumental role in the growing list of eligibility cases brought in recent months. According to data provided by the NCAA, 31 eligibility lawsuits have been filed, and most have come up short. Specifically, judges denied preliminary injunctions in 16 lawsuits and granted them in five. In addition, three lawsuits were voluntarily dismissed and seven are still pending at the trial court level. Unless and until the U.S Supreme Court weighs in on this topic, it stands to reason these types of player lawsuits will continue to be brought and continue to yield mixed outcomes.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Selna identified other deficiencies in the players\u2019 legal arguments. He said they failed to provide sufficient analysis on the relevant market for antitrust scrutiny, including by failing to offer \u201cinformation about how many players attended JUCO before transferring to a D-I institution and are affected by the Five-Year Rule or how many players receive NIL contracts.\u201d The judge also pointed out that \u201cthe NFL could be a substitute buyer\u201d of these players\u2019 services\u2014meaning if they declared for the NFL Draft instead of trying to keep playing college football\u2014which would be relevant in an antitrust analysis.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe players can appeal Selna\u2019s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, the NCAA said it \u201cstands by\u201d its five-year rule. The association added that \u201cpartnering with Congress is essential to provide clarity and stability for current and future student-athletes\u201d in light of legal outcomes differing \u201cfrom case to case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three seasoned players who hoped to play an additional year beyond their NCAA eligibility lost their bid for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[35858,1607,399,398,396,23318,397,1606,99,20737,7813],"class_list":{"0":"post-96815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-antitrust","9":"tag-college-football","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaa-legal-issues","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-nil","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-ucla","18":"tag-usc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96815","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=96815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}