Jeff99 said:
In June, the NCAA changed its eligibility rules to a "five for five" clock giving players five years to play five years of sports (essentially doing away with redshirts). Fourth year players entered the NFL draft without knowing a fifth year of eligibility would soon be passed. Everyone (including the NCAA) knew that these court cases would come as soon as the rule was passed. Essentially, the rule change gave players grounds to at least get a TRO through the courts.
None of these players (to my knowledge) is challenging the eligibility rules agreed to by the NCAA. They're just alleging disparate treatment under the NCAA's rules. It's not the start of players (as Craig alleges) jumping back and forth from the NCAA to NFL and back again.
Do I like that it's happening? Not really. Is it an invalidation of NCAA ability to set eligibility standards? No.
The NCAA "5 for 5" rule passed in June applied to players with eligibility remaining beginning with the 2026-27 sports year. As a result, the Class of 2022 (whose 4 year eligibility ended with the 2025-26 sports year) was not included in that expansion. All of the players that are suing are Class of 2022 who think they should get a 5th year, so they are directly challenging the established NCAA rules.
Effectively the NCAA was in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation because if you don't include the 2022 class then they sue, but if you do, then the class of 2026 high schoolers get screwed out of a position since rosters weren't expanded (schools and coaches are vehemently against this like they were at the beginning of COVID for budgetary reasons), so they'd sue.
Instead, now you have weird permutations where a player at Texas State originally regained eligibility for 2026 through the now invalidated Colorado lawsuit will not be able to play in the game against Texas, who will be fielding a player who regained his eligibility for 2026 through a lawsuit in a Travis County lawsuit. You also have several freshmen at LSU that will soon be shown the exit so that former NFL roster members and signees can join Lane.