INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The men’s college basketball season opened this week with a long list of players suiting up only because judges in several states have put the NCAA’s new eligibility model on hold for them.
The rule, adopted by the NCAA this summer, gives an athlete five years to play five seasons, with the clock starting at the 19th birthday or college enrollment, whichever comes first. Players who say it cut their careers short have sued in federal and state courts, and the results so far have split.
The biggest group is in California, where a judge granted a preliminary injunction in Glancey v. NCAA covering 76 players, most of them from the 2022 recruiting class. The order keeps them eligible through the end of the 2026-27 season. Plaintiffs include Jaxon Kohler, now at BYU after playing at Michigan State, Donovan Dent and Skyy Clark, who moved from UCLA to LSU, and Xaivian Lee, a Florida transfer headed to Gonzaga. The NCAA is expected to appeal.
Other rulings have gone the other way. An early order in a Colorado case, Wisne v. NCAA, would have given every member of the 2022 class another season, but that injunction was stayed. The NCAA also prevailed for a time in cases in Kentucky, Arizona and Ohio.
In Kentucky, a state appeals court dissolved a temporary order before a judge granted a new one, letting Texas Tech’s Thomas Castellanos return for the Red Raiders. In Louisiana, a Baton Rouge judge signed an order on Oct. 28 making LSU guard RJ Luis temporarily eligible, with a hearing on a longer injunction set for Nov. 13.
In court filings the NCAA has argued that reaching the natural end of eligibility does not amount to the kind of irreparable harm that justifies an injunction. Most of the cases remain unresolved.
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