DENVER (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday temporarily halted a court order that would have granted thousands of athletes who left college after last season an extra year of eligibility — a key ruling that came only eight days before football season's opening kickoff.
The lawsuit was filed by players who graduated high school in 2022, whose college eligibility ended last season and who were not included in the NCAA’s controversial new rule that grants most players five years of eligibility beginning next season.
After winning a ruling in district court last month, many of those players were trying to figure out how to return to their former schools to play another year. TCU and North Carolina play in Dublin next Saturday, one of eight games on the opening day schedule for major college football.
This 2-1 ruling from a panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver puts that on hold until the appeal can be heard in total. It could — but is not guaranteed to — tamp down the chaos from a series of rulings in courts around the country that had cleared the way for players in multiple sports to come back. The NCAA includes some 1,200 member schools and nearly a half-million athletes in all.
A big portion of the case rests on the idea that, with the fall season bearing down, some athletes were trying to regain spots on rosters that had already been locked in. The plaintiffs argued it was a matter of fairness: They shouldn’t be restricted from a fifth year — and the educational and NIL compensation opportunities that go along with it — that a player one year younger was entitled to.
But, the NCAA countered in its legal filing, “fairness is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Countless student-athletes already on campuses, and schools who built their rosters in reliance on the rules the NCAA’s membership wrote and agreed to follow, do not believe it is fair for thousands of formerly-ineligible athletes to return to competition at the start of the 2026–27 season,” it said.
The NCAA's chief legal officer, Scott Bearby, sent a memo to schools telling them they would not be subject to NCAA punishment "for any class members who were allowed to compete consistent with the scope of the Wisne injunction prior to the stay being granted.”
But, he reiterated, those players are no longer eligible.
Among them were defensive linemen Kellan Wyatt and Stephan Daley, both members of the national championship team at Indiana last season.
Bearby also acknowledged that the NCAA would continue to defend similar lawsuits the association is losing in state courts around the country — a signal that the NCAA knows Friday's ruling is not a guarantee to end the confusion created because of the new eligibility rule. More appeals are possible, even likely.
Making headlines this week was the return of former Ole Miss starters Dae’Quan Wright, Zxavian Harris and Wydett Williams, who won rulings from a state court in Louisiana giving them another season of eligibility even though they'd signed with NFL teams this summer.
Basketball teams have longer to figure this out — no team wants a player on the roster who might later be declared ineligible. Gonzaga, for one, recently added Dayton’s Javon Bennett and Florida State's Chauncey Wiggins, each of whom won eligibility lawsuits in different courts.
“Some of us coaches told the NCAA over and over again, if they waited longer to announce this, they probably wouldn’t have this issue,” Zags coach Mark Few said in a recent interview. “So I don’t know why anybody would not be open to it. Maybe you don’t need it, but if you do ... these are good guys.”
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