Former Tennessee point guard Zakai Zeigler is back in court, and this time the stakes are bigger.
Zeigler has filed an amended lawsuit against the NCAA seeking $12 million in damages, KnoxNews’ Stephen Thompson first reported Tuesday. The move comes after the NCAA changed its eligibility model to allow student-athletes to play five seasons in five years, a shift that landed a year after Zeigler’s original push for the same rule failed.
Last July, Zeigler sued the NCAA in hopes of landing an extra year of eligibility. He argued for a five years to play five seasons model, but the courts did not rule in his favor. That setback pushed the All-SEC guard into the next stage of his career, and he began playing professionally in France last season.
In his first filing, Zeigler said he could have made as much as $4 million if he had been able to play college basketball during the 2025-26 season. The amended lawsuit asks for three times that amount, tied to what Zeigler believes he would have earned by staying in college last year.
The new filing also arrives less than a week after high school class of 2022 athletes won lawsuits in several places, including Tennessee, that force the NCAA to grant eligibility for the upcoming 2026-27 athletic year. The NCAA had tried to keep those new rules from applying to fourth-year seniors whose eligibility ran out during the 2025-26 athletic year, and the governing body is still fighting those rulings.
That creates a tricky split in the system. A number of players, including incoming Tennessee basketball transfer Jalen Washington, are now positioned to play a fifth season this year. But if class of 2022 athletes all become eligible for a fifth year, players from class of 2021 like Zeigler are left in a difficult spot.
Student-athletes who graduated high school from 2016 through 2020 already benefited from five years of eligibility because of COVID-19 and the related extensions. That leaves the 2021 graduating class as the only group from 2016 onward limited to four years.
Zeigler’s Tennessee résumé is already packed. He was a four-year contributor and three-year starter, earned two All-SEC selections, won SEC Defensive Player of the Year, and was named a Third Team All-American by multiple outlets for his 2024-25 season.
He closed his senior year averaging 13.6 points and 7.4 assists per game, helping Tennessee reach the Elite Eight for the second straight season. He also played a major role in the Vols’ 2024 SEC regular-season championship.
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