A Texas judge has put the SEC’s new eligibility rule on ice, adding another twist to a week already packed with legal fights over who gets to keep playing college sports.
Dallas County Judge Martin Hoffman issued a temporary restraining order Thursday in a case involving more than 40 players, just two days after the Southeastern Conference passed a rule that would bar players from returning to the league from the pros. The ruling came in the middle of a broader scramble over the NCAA’s new five-year eligibility rule, which does not apply to college players who used up their fourth year of eligibility last spring. Many of those players are now suing around the country for a fifth year.
In the restraining order, Hoffman wrote: “As long as they would have been eligible to continue playing college sports in the following semester if they had a fifth year of eligibility, they are eligible today,”
Among the plaintiffs are former SMU receiver Jordon Hudson of the Cowboys and former Miami linebacker Wesley Bissainthe of the Chiefs. Neither one played in the SEC, but Hoffman also ordered the NCAA to open the transfer portal for a week, which means either player could end up at a new school if one chooses to sign him.
The ruling did not address the other Power 4 conferences, even though all of them have now passed similar rules that go beyond the NFL and also cover basketball. The Atlantic Coast Conference was the last of the four to act, approving its policy Thursday. Hours later, the Mountain West joined in with a similar prohibition.
The lawsuit names the NCAA, the SEC and commissioner Greg Sankey as defendants.
There are also players already in the mix with pro teams. At least two who signed with NFL clubs as undrafted free agents this offseason were hoping to play for No. 11 LSU.
The ACC’s new policy spells out who would be ruled ineligible. Under the resolution, a school cannot put a player on its football roster or its men’s or women’s basketball roster if that player has previously declared for an NFL, NBA or WNBA draft and failed to withdraw properly under NCAA rules, signed a contract with the NFL or another professional football league, the NBA, G-League, WNBA or an affiliate, or been listed on any roster for an NFL, NBA-G-League or WNBA team or affiliate.
N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said Thursday after practice - and before the ACC approved its policy - that he sees the issue as a clean line.
“Just to me, that’s kind of a cutoff, when a guy goes pro,” Doeren said. “And we say ‘Goodbye, good luck,’ and we move on.
And there shouldn’t be the ability to come back. If it’s the Big Ten, SEC - it doesn’t matter to me: it’s an amateurism rule.”
The NFL also made its stance clear Wednesday, saying players who leave the league and return to college won’t be allowed back into the NFL this season.
What happens next may come down to how many more players - and lawyers - decide to take these conference-level rules to court. The NCAA has won some appeals in related eligibility cases, but Thursday’s Texas ruling undercuts, at least for now, the idea that conference rules would be safer than the NCAA’s own policy.
Rick Karcher, a faculty athletics representative at Eastern Michigan and former sports-law attorney, said before the ruling that conferences have more room to set their own standards if they are not colluding. “From an antitrust perspective, as long as conferences aren’t colluding, they can make their own rules about allowing, or not allowing, former professional players to compete,” he said. “And regardless of any injunction order that may be issued, it doesn’t require any school to allow any player to compete on the field and I highly doubt that any schools are going to violate conference rules.”
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