The NCAA’s new five-to-play-five eligibility model was supposed to simplify things. Instead, it has already landed the organization in court.
On Thursday, Judge Chris Wagner of the Hamilton County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas granted injunctive relief to a group of basketball players from the high school Class of 2022 who were seeking to be grandfathered into the new system. The ruling gives the athletes a path to enter the transfer portal, and according to the AP, a pretrial conference is set for Aug. 4.
Wagner did not mince words in his ruling. “The NCAA is a ‘voluntary membership organization’ that controls, markets, and sells a product: student-athletes,” he wrote via Ralph D.
Russo and Justin Williams of The Athletic. “Despite arbitrarily excluding a class of athletes from taking part in a fifth season of intercollegiate competition, the NCAA seeks to evade judicial review and possibly punish member institutions for their participation in the legal process.”
The lawsuit targeted language in the NCAA’s June 23 eligibility announcement. Under the five-to-play-five framework, athletes can receive five flat years of eligibility if they enroll in college by the academic year after their 19th birthday. But the NCAA also made clear what happens to players who already used their final season under the old rules during 2025-26: they get “no additional eligibility,” the organization said in tabular form.
That decision has now opened the door to a challenge from players who want the old system’s final-year group treated differently. The athletes involved are not just fringe cases, either.
The list includes five different All-Conference players, along with two players who could play important roles as ex-Aggies coach and Penguins coach Jerrod Calhoun takes over at Cincinnati. It also includes multiple junior college transfers and Brown, Florida Tech’s leading scorer in `25, a productive former Division II player.
Reaction to the five-to-play-five model has generally been favorable because, in theory, it wipes out some of the sport’s most frustrating loopholes, including redshirts and waivers. It also avoids awkward situations like center Charles Bediako’s five-game return to Alabama in `26.
But by not building in a grandfather clause for the high school Class of 2022, the NCAA created the very kind of legal mess it was hoping to avoid. And the timing is hardly ideal. On June 26, Sportico’s Daniel Libit reported that the NCAA’s five-year legal fees had reached $293 million, a figure that is $13 million more than the CNBC-estimated value of Cincinnati’s entire athletic department.
It may look like a narrow dispute for now, but if the ruling ultimately expands relief beyond this group, the ripple effects could reach far beyond one court case.
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