The Ghost of Johnny said:
I hope that the judge will rule that limiting an athlete to 4 years of eligibility in 5 infringes on the rights is the student athlete. Any student enrolled in a school and making progress toward completing a degree should be allowed to participate no matter the age or total years of play.
Do you realize what that would do to college football? College Football would mostly be made up of 25 to early 30 year olds who aren't quite good enough for the NFL. You would have the true high 4 and 5 stars coming out of high school who look destined for the NFL and a bunch of very good players who wouldn't be able to make an NFL roster. These players could keep enough NIL money coming in to live well (plus scholarships) and take easy degrees programs until their skills diminish. Incoming high school classes would shrink dramatically and be just the elite top high school guys.
Why would you ever recruit a 3 star or low 4 star guy if you have a team full of proven players with experience? This would absolutely make college football just another second tier professional league like the USFL.
NiL dramatically impacted college football (IMO for the worse). Getting rid of all limitations of years of eligibility would destroy it completely.
Luckily, this case is NOT about getting rid of all time based eligibility requirements. It is about whether Junior College years should count against NCAA eligibility requirements. It could still be very impactful if the Vanderbilt QB wins. It might mean high school players good enough to make major college programs but not elite programs go the Junior College route to get better so they can be in a better position since their is little drawback to doing so. Hopefully the case loses.