A ruling by a Tennessee judge on Wednesday could have significant ramifications on college eligibility moving forward, as the NCAA was dealt another blow in the courtroom.
The judge granted college football quarterback Diego Pavia‘s request for a temporary injunction against the NCAA and its eligibility rules, allowing Pavia to compete in the 2025 season.
This despite Pavia having exhausted his college eligibility under the current rules. The 23-year-old has played two years of junior college and three years of Division I football, but he’s challenging the NCAA’s policy that counts a junior college stint on a player’s eligibility clock.
Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would allow him to play in 2025 has been GRANTED. pic.twitter.com/4zjIjBMWhs
— Sam C. Ehrlich (@samcehrlich) December 18, 2024
Student-athletes currently get five calendar years to play four seasons, with a stint at a junior college counting as one season of play.
The court has at least temporarily agreed with Pavia’s claim that junior college, which is not an NCAA institution, should not count against NCAA eligibility. Therefore, the NCAA cannot enforce its eligibility rules that would prohibit Pavia from playing next season.
The NCAA still has the option of appealing the decision, but reports indicate that its chances of being granted one are slim at best.
Even if the court ultimately rules in favor of the NCAA at the end of the trial, Pavia will have already completed his season in question.
Wednesday’s ruling figures to be a landmark moment as not only could it result in junior college athletes gaining an extra year of NCAA eligibility, but it could also lead to more legal challenges relating to the NCAA’s traditional eligibility rules.
It is at least the third ruling in the past year that denies the NCAA the ability to enforce one of its own rules—the others being the ruling allowing multi-time transfers to compete immediately, and the ruling that meant the NCAA couldn’t enforce its NIL policies.
My Lawyers are legit‼️
Ryan and Sal I appreciate yall!
God is good, All the time❤️— Diego Pavia (@diegopavia02) December 18, 2024
As of now, the ruling doesn’t relate to other student-athletes, just Pavia, meaning others who have competed in junior college in the past still have it counted towards their NCAA eligibility.
“Can all of our junior college guys come back?” one athletic administrator asked, according to Yahoo Sports. “Well, they’ve got a pretty good argument.”
In the previous transfer and NIL cases, the NCAA ultimately provided clarity on what the ruling meant for others.
Ryan Downton, Pavia’s lawyer, said the hope is that the ruling “may open the door for other former junior college players to obtain an additional year of eligibility without filing a lawsuit,” according to Yahoo Sports.
The NCAA issued the following statement, expressing disappointment with the decision.
“The NCAA is making changes to deliver more benefits to student-athletes, but a patchwork of state laws and court opinions make clear that partnering with Congress is essential to provide stability for the future of all college athletes,” the statement said.
We’ll have 25-year-olds swimming against 18-year-olds, which is not great. On the other hand, maybe we should consider an injunction like this to battle the SEC’s onerous roster cuts.
Do they still have degree progress requirements? If I remember correctly, back when I swam, the degree progress requirements had you on track to complete a bachelor’s degree in five years.
It might be time for the NCAA to consider a simple age restriction for college athletics.
All but confirms Brad Tandy as Texas’ “last big addition” for the spring.
Seems like if this ends up applying to all JuCo swimmers then NAIA should follow as well. Just one can of worms after another.
As someone not familiar with the complete NCAA college system. Can someone explain respectfully how a junior college counts. Again, I ask RESPECTFULLY, to understand more fully as in Canada there is no comparison. A junior college is not linked to university eligibility ever.
It comes down to how the NCAA defines “collegiate institution.” Pursuant to NCAA rules, when a student enrolls full-time at a collegiate institution, they start their 5-year eligibility clock. It makes no difference if the collegiate institution is a NCAA member institution, a junior college, or a university in Canada that does not sponsor varsity athletics. Separately, if a student-athlete represents their collegiate institution in “intercollegiate competition” (another term of art that has a broad definition), that counts against a student-athlete’s 4 seasons that they are eligible to compete- again that’s regardless of the classification of the collegiate institution the student-athlete competes for.
Right. Student-athletes who go to college in Canada for a few years, for example, also counts against their total. Or Russia. Or Germany. Or anywhere else.
Thank you for clarifying! I was not aware all were treated the same.
Thank you!
curse you grant house!
oh wait
not grant house’s fault.
These freakin’ judges are out of their minds. It used to be that college and college athletics meant being, you know, a student or a student-athlete. Now, it’s about being a player employee who must not face any restrictions on his ability to make money. The schools have restrictions on their money, however, as the majors all subsidize 20-25 sports that annually lose money.
The schools and NCAA have been very clear about this: they are NOT employees. The thing is, they could probably put some of the restrictions they want into place if the athletes were employees.
Two of the NCAA is losing these cases: trying to restrict rights that don’t apply to other students and inconsistent application of rules to some sets but not others. The latter is why they lost this case.
The schools have been clear just because they say it over and over? They treat them as employees in many/most ways
Yes, they’ve said it over and over in court. Congratulations, you’ve found the crux of many of the NCAA’s problems. They’ve said they’re not employees yet try to treat them as though they are.
I mean this is what you get for using all of your resources to enforce ‘amateurism’ while happily profitting from selling and merchandising athletes likeness. The pretension of grandiose values behind ‘amateurism’ rings rather hollow in a society that condemns “the welfare aueen” and expects people to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’; it’s rather difficult to see the feigned virtue in punishing people who can struggle to feed themselves because gosh darn it why can’t these spoiled brats be chivalrous members of the academy and see how good they have it?
Now I’ll point out its not unprecedented for court rulings to be rather heavy handing in proscription to a point of essentially being legislative, so the total… Read more »