More College Sports Eligibility? Federal Appeals Court Says Not So Fast

A federal appeals court on Friday temporarily halted a court order that would have granted thousands of athletes who left college after last season an extra year of eligibility.

The lawsuit was filed by players who graduated high school in 2022, whose college eligibility ended last season and who were not included in the NCAA’s controversial new rule that grants most players five years of eligibilty, beginning next season.

After winning a ruling in district court last month, many of those players were trying to figure out how to return to their former schools to play another year. Football season opens over the next two weeks.

This 2-1 ruling from a panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver puts that on hold until the appeal can be heard in total. It could tamp down the chaos from a series of rulings in courts around the country that had cleared the way for players to come back.

A big portion of the case rests on the idea that some athletes were trying to regain spots on rosters that had already been locked in. The plaintiffs argued it was a matter of fairness: They shouldn’t be restricted from a fifth year — and the educational and NIL compensation opportunities that go along with it — that a player one year younger was entitled to.

But, the NCAA countered in its legal filing, "fairness is in the eye of the beholder."

"Countless student-athletes already on campuses, and schools who built their rosters in reliance on the rules the NCAA’s membership wrote and agreed to follow, do not believe it is fair for thousands of formerly-ineligible athletes to return to competition at the start of the 2026–27 season," it said.

Among those planning returns were defensive linemen Kellan Wyatt and Stephan Daley, both members of the national champion Indiana roster from last season.

The ruling is not a guarantee to end the confusion across college sports. The NCAA is on the losing end of a number of lawsuits filed in other state and federal courts over essentially the same issue, and it's hard to tell how this case will impact those.

Making headlines this week was the return of former Ole Miss starters Dae’Quan Wright, Zxavian Harris and Wydett Williams, who won rulings from a state court in Louisiana giving them another season of eligibility even though they'd signed with NFL teams this summer. The NCAA could still directly appeal this ruling, making the participation of these players no sure thing, either.

Basketball teams have longer to figure this out — no team wants a player on the roster who might later be declared ineligibile. Gonzaga, for one, recently added Dayton’s Javon Bennett and Florida State's Chauncey Wiggins, each of whom won eligibility lawsuits in different courts. Former St. John's player RJ Luis, who signed as an undrafted free agent with the NBA's Boston Celtics before being waived and then signing with the Utah Jazz, has also filed suit to return to college basketball.

"Some of us coaches told the NCAA over and over again, if they waited longer to announce this, they probably wouldn’t have this issue," Zags coach Mark Few said in a recent interview. "So I don’t know why anybody would not be open to it. Maybe you don’t need it, but if you do ... these are good guys."

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been vocally opposed to allowing pros to return to college sports, saying that it "fuels disruption," per ESPN. "These rules are grounded in the principle that athletics are an integral part of the academic experience. The rules align the time permitted for college athletics with the pursuit of an undergraduate education and further the important purpose of preserving opportunities for future student-athletes to participate in college sports."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.