In an attempt to simplify its rules and bring some stability to today’s chaotic college sports landscape, the NCAA implemented new eligibility rules. The result has been a new round of chaos and legal challenges to the impotent organization’s authority.
The NCAA Division I Cabinet adopted a new age-based, 5-year eligibility rule. Athletes will have five years to compete in five seasons once their eligibility clock begins. The rule eliminates redshirt seasons and waivers, which have come under increased scrutiny in the NIL age.
The rule change is straightforward and makes sense. But the NCAA also determined the new rule would not apply to athletes who just completed their fourth season without a redshirt. That means athletes who started their collegiate careers in 2022 are out of eligibility and out of luck.
Lawsuits have ensued across the country challenging the new rule, including here in West Virginia, where a group of 12 Marshall University athletes is challenging the rule.
Last week, a judge in Ohio granted an injunction in a lawsuit filed by 24 men’s and women’s college basketball players. This week, a federal class action lawsuit was filed in Colorado by a group of athletes alleging that the new rule adversely affected their ability to extend their college careers and NIL opportunities.
The NCAA may have avoided this mess had it simply moved the cutoff date back a year to allow athletes who have completed four seasons to play one more year. After all, many of their teammates and contemporaries were granted sixth, and sometimes seventh, years of eligibility due to COVID and other waivers.
However, the latest round of legal contention involving the NCAA lends more credence to the need for Congress to step in.
The Protect College Sports Act, of which Senator Shelley Moore Capito is now a co-sponsor, would provide the NCAA with an anti-trust exemption so its rules regarding everything from NIL payments to eligibility rules would have authority and enforceability. The bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee and is now with the full Senate.
When the business of college athletics exploded in the 1990s and 2000s, NCAA leadership cashed in on lucrative media rights contracts but avoided establishing new rules and standards that reflected the new reality that college sports were a billion-dollar business. Instead, lingering issues festered until court rulings opened a door to the chaotic landscape we now endure.
The NCAA’s authority does not extend much beyond its Indianapolis headquarters. Every time it tries to implement a new rule meant to provide stability to the college sports landscape, its authority is challenged in court, where it is very unlikely that an elected judge is going to rule against the local college athletes.
Rarely has the answer to any problem been congressional involvement. Although the Protect College Sports Act comes with its own questions and consequences, it may be the framework that is needed to provide the structure and authority the NCAA needs in this new world of college athletics.