A federal judge in Louisiana has ruled that 16 rookie NFL players must be allowed to re-enter the NCAA transfer portal to abandon their rookie NFL contracts and enter a fifth year of college football eligibility.
The players filed a lawsuit in Louisiana against the NCAA after a separate lawsuit filed in Colorado allowed the high school class of 2022 a fifth year of college football eligibility. After the Colorado lawsuit, the NCAA acquiesced to the fifth year of eligibility but did not include the college class of 2025-26 in the plan. The NCAA is also still appealing the Colorado ruling.
With the Colorado ruling as precedent, the 16 NFL players joined together to attain the fifth year of college eligibility. On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) allowing the players to set aside their NFL contracts and re-enter the transfer portal to see if a team would sign them.
“The NCAA is ordered to open the transfer portal … for one week from entry of this order,” the TRO states.
The list of players includes former LSU player Jack Pyburn, Ole Miss defensive lineman Xzavian Harris, Ole Miss safety Wydett Williams, Ole Miss tight end Dae’Quan Wright, James Madison linebacker Trent Hendrick, Oregon State running back Anthony Hankerson, Notre Dame defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka, South Carolina safety DQ Smith and SMU running back TJ Harden, according to On3.
Many of these players are currently in NFL mini camps.
Both lawsuits have put potential fifth-year students on short notice, leaving them less than a month to find a school willing to take them on. The decision states that players have one week to enter their names in the transfer portal. Still, it also allows the NCAA to provide a concrete reason why any individual player should not be afforded the right to re-enter the portal.
The NCAA blasted the ruling in Louisiana and insisted it’s part of several court decisions that only end up stripping opportunities from incoming freshmen “who will never have a chance to begin their collegiate sports experience.”
NCAA senior vice president Tim Buckley railed against the ruling, saying, “Courts across the country granting relief to ineligible athletes who already had every opportunity to compete in college — sometimes without even having a hearing — are failing to appreciate the destabilizing effect their rulings are having on college sports. The lawyers bringing these cases seemingly won’t be satisfied until every professional athlete can treat college sports as a fallback option, regardless of the opportunities it strips from those who will never have a chance to begin their collegiate sports experience.”
The Colorado and Louisiana rulings are just some of the latest court actions causing havoc in college sports as the NCAA struggles to maintain standards and order in this new era of NIL deals.
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