I recently wrote that the NCAA’s new eligibility rules will deter lawsuits brought by students who wish to remain college athletes after they’ve exhausted their NCAA eligibility.

I stand by that claim, but it’s clear the era of deterrence hasn’t yet arrived. 

Last month the NCAA Division I Cabinet unanimously approved a system that provides five years of eligibility beginning at the start of the academic year following an athlete’s 19th birthday or upon full-time enrollment in college, whichever comes sooner. This move reflects a significant change from a system that generally provided for four seasons of play within a five-year period.

A fifth year of play extends the time college athletes can pursue NIL and revenue-share opportunities, as well as furthering their education as full-time students. Considering that less than 2% of college athletes will become professional athletes, the chance for another year could provide some a significant amount of money. It also offers them the opportunity to further hone their skills in hopes of attracting pro teams’ interest. Schools benefit, too, by being able to play more seasoned and physically developed athletes.

In addition, the new system eliminates a waiver process, while preserving exceptions for pregnancy, active-duty military service and official religious missions. The previous system featured opportunities to apply for hardship waivers, which led to difficult judgment calls for the NCAA and accusations of inconsistent treatment.

More time to play—and to earn money—matters from an antitrust perspective. Restraints on competition that are deemed reasonable by courts are more likely to withstand antitrust scrutiny.

But more time to play is not unlimited time, and a time cap on how long a college athlete can pursue monetary compensation invites such scrutiny. That’s because the NCAA oversees conferences and colleges that compete to sign athletes, who offer services in the form of their labor and marketability to buyers (i.e., colleges).

This type of lawsuit doesn’t happen in pro sports. Provided they avoid getting into serious trouble and aren’t banned, pro athletes remain eligible to play in a league for life. Their time ends naturally when they’re no longer employed by a team that wishes to sign them for an amount of money the athlete finds acceptable. Also, pro leagues collectively bargain rules with players’ unions, and those rules are then exempt from antitrust law.

College sports operate very differently on those fronts. College athletes are full-time students who, as the NCAA has argued, should be able to play college sports for about as long as they and their classmates are college students. That’s typically around four or five years. 

Whether college athletes ought to be considered student employees is a matter of ongoing legal debate. What is not up for debate is that playing college sports is not an experience intended to last indefinitely. After all, college itself is not an end. It is a means to a career or profession, or further study in graduate school.

In that light, the NCAA has insisted that the more college sports seem like pro sports, with athletes who want to stick around well into their 20s, the game’s marketability and TV ratings could be tarnished. College sports could seem more like minor league pro sports, where the athletes aren’t as good as the pros, than the unique product of college students playing games.

But the eligibility lawsuits continue.

In Ohio, 15 college athletes from the high school graduating class of 2022 recently sued the NCAA. They argue they too should benefit from a new policy that permits “five years to graduate, five years to practice [and] five years to play.”

Filip Borovicanin et al. v. NCAA, which is led by attorneys Darren Heitner and Ryan Downton, maintains that the NCAA has breached obligations owed to the athletes in the D-I manual. The alleged breaches center on assurances of fundamental fairness, good faith and consistency, with the basic idea that denying eligibility to the class of 2022—athletes who “spent four years competing against athletes who received an extra year through COVID-era waivers”—is unwarranted and unjustified. The plaintiffs further insist that the NCAA allowing former G League players and other ex-pros to play undermines the association’s position that Borovicanin and his fellow plaintiffs can’t play.

Hamilton County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas Judge Christopher Wagner said he will issue a ruling on a motion for preliminary injunction this Thursday. If the judge sides with Borovicanin, athletes in other jurisdictions who are similarly from the high school class of 2022 could be incentivized to commence their own lawsuits. Even if Borovicanin loses in Hamilton County, the ruling wouldn’t foreclose athletes in other jurisdictions from suing over the same issue.

Put another way: Essentially the same lawsuit could play out in different courts across the country, over and over again. If that sounds familiar, it’s what happened after then-Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia won an injunction in December 2024 to play a sixth season. Since that ruling, the NCAA has faced more than 70 lawsuits, and while it has won most of them, anytime it loses a school can play an athlete whom the NCAA deems ineligible. 

Meanwhile, in an Illinois federal court, basketball player DeJuan Campbell, who played for the California Golden Bears in the 2025-26 season and graduated, recently sued the NCAA for monetary damages. The 23-year-old guard contends it is a violation of antitrust law for the NCAA’s new eligibility rule to “not apply to athletes whose fourth season of collegiate eligibility was completed by spring 2026.” Represented by Justin Boley and other attorneys from Wexler, Boley & Elgersma, Campbell maintains the NCAA is unreasonably restricting college athletes’ labor market through an age-based rule.

Over in Nevada, UNLV defensive lineman Cohen Fuller, who graduated high school in 2022, has brought a lawsuit objecting to the NCAA counting Fuller’s seasons played in junior college and in the NAIA. Fuller, who is represented by attorneys Geoffrey Tabor and Timothy O’Reilly, raises antitrust and breach of contract claims that have become familiar in college athlete litigation.

In Tennessee, Jalen Washington, who played basketball at UNC from 2022-25 and at Vanderbilt in 2025-26, and 11 other basketball players from the high school class graduating of 2022 sued the NCAA on Monday in a Tennessee court. Downton and attorney Salvador Hernandez—the duo who have litigated on behalf of Pavia and others—contend that it is a breach of contract and the covenant of good faith and fair dealing for their clients to be denied a chance to play in 2026-27 when “class of 2022 graduates … who happened to play at least one professional season, or those who happened to redshirt” can play.

For its part, the NCAA in court documents has maintained its eligibility rules comply with the law, as eligibility rules are part and parcel of competitive sports and student athletes can’t expect to play college sports as a career.

In addition, the NCAA asserts that it isn’t in breach of contract by enforcing a rule but rather the plaintiffs seek a new type of contract that the NCAA never signed and never would sign. To that end, the NCAA stresses its Division I cabinet unanimously agreed to the new eligibility rules and to how athletes would be affected by them.

Furthermore, the NCAA maintains that lawsuits trying to upend rules “create chaos in college sports.” The association, which is represented by a group of attorneys that includes Rakesh Kilaru (Wilkinson Stekloff), Taylor Askew (Holland & Knight) and Keith Shumate (Squire Patton Boggs),has pointed out that courts granting athletes another season—or more—will take away spots from incoming athletes. Those incoming athletes may have been promised a position on the team and would stand to lose their spot if some of the athletes from the high school class of 2022 become eligible. 

As discussed on Sportico, some of the “chaos” appears to be caused by the colleges themselves.

In some instances the athletes are suing because a coach or athletic director has assured them of a roster spot if they can obtain a court order to play. That court order would be against the NCAA, the school’s member association. In other words, colleges agree to play by NCAA rules but some also encourage athletes to challenge those rules in court for the school’s benefit.

The bottom line is that even as NCAA offers more athletes the chance to play Division I sports, athletes who are denied the chance still have the opportunity to sue. Whether those excluded athletes can convincingly assert that it is arbitrary to deny them a chance to earn money and cultivate their skills while allowing a wider band of other athletes is a legal question that hasn’t gone away yet.