Several former college football players have made unexpected returns to campus from NFL training camps following legal rulings that paved the way for veteran players to receive an additional year of eligibility, igniting the latest flashpoint during the sport’s highly tumultuous offseason.
The rulings have stemmed from the recent decision by the NCAA to alter longstanding eligibility rules for current and future athletes to an age-based, five-year model that gives athletes in all sports five years to complete five seasons of play.
Occurring nearly simultaneously, courts in multiple states have broadened the new NCAA regulation to include athletes from the high school class of 2022 who had presumably finished their careers during the past academic year.
“The big picture here is that we’re watching a new layer of college sports governance emerge in real time,” said Ryan Regula, a partner at Snell & Wilmer who focuses on administrative law on the federal and state level.
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“The NCAA used to be the sole regulator. Now conferences are asserting independent regulatory authority — adopting their own eligibility rules, filing their own lawsuits, and making enforcement decisions the NCAA can’t or won’t make. It’s a cooperative federalism model, similar to how federal agencies and state enforcement bodies share overlapping but distinct authority in other areas of the law. The legal battles over where the NCAA’s authority ends and conference authority begins are just getting started.”
College coaches such as LSU’s Lane Kiffin have rationalized their use of this shocking back-to-college route with a simple explanation: If we weren’t doing this, someone else would.
“At the end of the day, because of these rulings, they're either going to play for you or they're going to play for someone else around the country,” Kiffin said this week.
These recent developments represent the latest reshaping of rules related to eligibility and amateurism that have defined college sports for decades. But of immediate concern is the roster chaos caused by a potential influx of athletes returning to the Bowl Subdivision.
Most FBS programs "are operating under terms of the House settlement, where roster limits were imposed and these were settled in,” said an individual with knowledge of the thought process behind the implementation of the new eligibility rules, who spoke to USA Today Sports on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
“By the time this passed in June, we already had rosters largely in place from our coaches and programs."
Explaining the “five-for-five” rule change
The NCAA Division I Cabinet unanimously approved the new eligibility model in June in part to remove the redshirt and waiver bylaws that have come under increased legal scrutiny in cases challenging NCAA rules.
“While previous NCAA rules have served college sports well for a long time, we heard also loud and clear from NCAA members and student-athletes that eligibility rules should be easier to understand,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement.
Under this model, an athlete’s five seasons of eligibility are linked to a clock that starts upon their full-time enrollment or at the onset of the academic year following their 19th birthday.
A general view of Notre Dame Stadium during the 2022 game between Notre Dame and Stanford in South Bend, Ind.
The NCAA hoped to implement this plan beginning with the 2027 academic year. In late July, however, a federal court in Denver ruled that the application of this model must include athletes in the class of 2022 who completed their fourth seasons of eligibility this past spring.
Last week, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the NCAA a stay that reversed that decision and allowed the five-for-five model to be “implemented as the Division I membership intended,” wrote Scott Bearby, the NCAA’s chief legal officer.
While seen as a win for the NCAA, this latest court ruling does not affect state-level decisions, notably a Louisiana court's decision to grant fifth-year eligibility to more than a dozen plaintiffs.
These developments have placed the NCAA, college football and athletes on what has become familiar ground, as competing visions and legal rulings have left all parties uncertain how to approach roster management and more for this season and beyond.
"I do believe that there’s chaos, but I believe that the way that conferences and schools describe the chaos is just a mischaracterization of that," said Brandon Copeland, a 10-year NFL veteran and the executive director of Athletes.org, a players’ association for college athletes with over 5,300 members. "I think the chaos is really the fact that there’s a lack of enforceable rules, because the way in which these schools and conferences try to interact and create rules over athletes is just illegal."
Conferences push back on NFL-to-college returnees
The two biggest conferences in the country, the Big Ten and SEC, have voiced near-unanimous opposition to athletes leaving NFL training camps to rejoin college rosters.
For the Big Ten, the prohibition extends to “football players who have signed a professional contract, were on a professional roster at any point or declared for the NFL draft as an underclassman without withdrawing,” the league said in a statement.
The SEC rule covers three categories of former athletes: those who previously declared for the NFL, NBA or WNBA drafts without withdrawing; those who signed a contract with an NFL, NBA or WNBA team; and those who have been listed on an NFL, NBA or WNBA roster.
According to the league’s announcement, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey “is authorized to enforce this expectation with penalties against member institutions.” Those penalties include 50% of season suspension for head coaches, 50% of that sport's annual operating budget and SEC voting privileges revoked on some matters.
Said Copeland, "I think any common-sense leadership, frankly, and I’m not going to mince my words on that, would’ve said, 'Hey, we’re going to implement this five-for-five rule. The 2022 class is going to have issues with this. Let’s just take the short-term hit, allow the whole 2022 class an eligibility waiver. And then we’ll remove our ego for a year, and next year we’ll have a cleaner system, potentially.'"
While a number of conference and NCAA-wide eligibility decisions have been challenged in court, recent legal rulings suggest that “conference-level governance may be viewed differently from restrictions imposed across the NCAA as a whole,” said Kathleen Dion, the Education Industry Team Chair and Professional and Collegiate Sports Industry team member at Robinson+Cole.
“So, while state-court injunctions against NCAA-wide eligibility restrictions certainly create legal uncertainty, conferences may believe those decisions do not automatically invalidate their own independently adopted rules. Whether that distinction ultimately holds up will depend on the particular conference, the rule being challenged, and the legal theory at issue.”
Fifth-year eligibility brings chaos to Power Four rosters
More than a dozen players who had already participated in NFL training camps have entered the transfer portal, including former SMU running back TJ Harden, Mississippi defensive lineman Zxavian Harris and former Notre Dame defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka.
Harden was cut by the Seattle Seahawks after playing in the team’s preseason opener. Harris was waived by the New Orleans Saints in early August. Tuihalamaka has since committed to LSU.
Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said this week that things were “too late” in the process for returnees such as Tuihalamaka “to have success in the classroom and on the field, so that's been our stance on it.”
No potential returnee has raised more eyebrows than former Mississippi tight end Dae’Quan Wright, who was waived by the Cleveland Browns after initially signing with the Philadelphia Eagles as an undrafted free agent.
Through his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, Wright has stated his intent to sign with LSU after making 39 receptions for 635 yards during the 2025 season. According to the recent Louisiana court ruling, any player looking to return to college must "terminate any such (NFL) contract and repay any money they have received.”
As noted by Kiffin, the personnel arms race triggered by changes related to NIL and the transfer portal has created a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mindset among Power Four teams with the goal of competing for national championships and the financial wherewithal to do so.
The cost of adding these players would be significant, an individual in the college landscape told USA Today Sports. Whether it's a "state-school scholarship or a private institution such as Stanford, Notre Dame, Duke or Northwestern or many others, there's still real costs affixed to those roster spots,” they said.
And these potential additions could come at an additional cost. FBS teams are subject to a 105-player roster cap; programs filled available spots during this winter’s two-week transfer window and traditional signing period, meaning any newcomers could force coaches to cut current players to make roster space.
Thanks to NFL training camps and preseason play, the assumption is that the potential returnees would be physically ready to compete. But there’s an overhanging question of how quickly these players can acclimate themselves to new styles and playbooks, even if some players — such as Wright or former James Madison linebacker Trent Hendrick, who recently committed to his former coach Bob Chesney at UCLA — would bring along a familiarity with the existing schemes.
For now, the door is closing on former athletes who were not included in previously ruled cases on the state level, such as the case in Louisiana.
“The athletes still have legal options, but the path just got harder,” said Regula. “The practical problem is time. The season starts in days. Getting a (temporary restraining order) against a conference requires finding a court willing to act on an emergency basis against a different defendant than the one already enjoined. It’s doable — we’ve seen courts move fast in this space — but it’s another lawsuit, another set of briefing, and another judge.”
