The NCAA did not just change an eligibility rule in late June. It detonated the offseason in August, left a graduating senior class on the wrong side of the blast radius, and then pretended the lawsuits were somebody else’s problem. That is not governance. That is institutional malpractice, and I am done treating it like a paperwork dispute.
Nearly 100 men’s Division I coaches just told CBS Sports the quiet part out loud. Asked if 2026 seniors should get a fifth year under the new five-in-five model, 58 percent said yes. Forty-two percent said no. The split is not really about philosophy. It is about timing, self-interest, and how much chaos a coach is willing to absorb when the portal turns into a courthouse.
I have watched this sport long enough to know the difference between a clean rule change and a delayed detonation. The Cabinet unanimously approved an age-based model that gives athletes five years to play five seasons if they enroll no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday. Fine. Streamline the clock. Kill the waiver circus. That part I can defend. What I cannot defend is leaving the kids who just exhausted four seasons under the old rules locked out while every program with money starts hunting them like free agents in mid-August.
The Timing Was the Crime
One anonymous coach put it with the kind of clarity the NCAA never will: “Making this rule and announcing it before the start of classes is maybe the dumbest move of all time. Maybe as dumb as Mark Emmert saying paying players will never happen.” Another said he just wished it had been done last October or in the spring, because if football had caught this mess mid-cycle the lawsuits would have been nuclear.
He is right. Basketball is living through the softer version of the nightmare, and it is still ugly. Louisville, Arizona, Texas Tech, Houston, Tennessee, Gonzaga and others have already taken commitments from players banking on a bonus season. Some of those guys were in NBA Summer League a month ago. Now they are shopping for a judge and a roster spot. That is not roster construction. That is a legal scavenger hunt with NIL attached.
The NCAA’s answer has been the same every time: we will not double back. Charlie Baker will remind you that 98 percent of the 550,000 NCAA student-athletes will go pro in something other than sports, as if that sentence settles the fairness question for the ones who just finished their fourth year under a different contract. It does not. It never did.
I said the waiver system was broken years ago. Nobody in Indianapolis wanted to hear it until the courts started writing the eligibility manual for them. Now judges in Ohio, Tennessee, and Colorado are issuing injunctions, the Colorado ruling went class-wide for the entire high school Class of 2022 that exhausted eligibility in spring 2026, and the association’s response is to call the decision “egregiously wrong” and prepare an appeal. That is not leadership. That is damage control with a law degree.
Lawsuit Eligibility Is Not Eligibility
Here is where I part company with the pure free-market crowd. One coach who voted yes still drew the line I care about: “Yes — if they all get the year. I don’t think giving it to people because they sue is wise.” Exactly. A fifth year that depends on which courtroom your lawyer found first is not a rule. It is a lottery with better production values.
The 42 percent saying no are not all villains. Some of them locked their rosters months ago and do not want to re-open the books for de facto free agency in August. Some of them are tired of watching high-major programs with deeper NIL pools vacuum up every available body. I understand the competitive jealousy. I do not respect the defense of the original cutoff.
Because the original cutoff was an act of negligence. You do not redesign the eligibility clock after a class has already played its “final” season and then act shocked when those players sue. You do not eliminate almost every redshirt and waiver path, sell the five-in-five model as the clean future, and leave one graduating class holding the bag so the paperwork looks tidy for fall 2027 enrollees. That is not streamlining. That is throwing the last group under the bus and calling it reform.
Another coach joked he would either be “Warden Norton in his office or Red meeting up with Andy on the beach in a month’s time.” The Shawshank reference lands because that is the choice the NCAA left everybody: sit in the cell of a broken rule or dig your way out through the courts. Grown men coaching multi-million-dollar programs should not have to pick a prison-movie ending in August.
Give Them All the Year or Admit You Cannot Run This
I am telling you what the 58 percent already know and the association refuses to say. Grandfather the entire 2026 senior class. Not the ones who hired the right firm. Not the ones who landed on the right docket. ALL of them. Do it because the timing of the June vote made selective exclusion indefensible. Do it because competitive integrity dies the second eligibility becomes a function of geography and legal fees. Do it because every week this drags on, another program is rewriting its depth chart with court-approved free agents while the NCAA writes press releases about congressional help that has not arrived.
Legacy is on the table here. Not just for the players who want one more season. For Charlie Baker. For the Cabinet that voted unanimously and then watched the sport catch fire. For every coach who is currently pretending this is a principle fight when half of them are just trying to keep the next four-star from landing on an opponent’s bench because a judge in Denver said so.
I have seen enough of these cycles to know how they end. Either the association swallows hard and extends the year cleanly, or the courts keep doing it for them in pieces until the 2026-27 season looks like a settlement hearing with jump balls. The coaches already voted. Fifty-eight percent told you the truth. The other forty-two percent can keep defending a cutoff that never should have existed.
GIVE THEM THE YEAR. Stop making kids litigate their way back onto a roster. And if Indianapolis cannot do that much, stop calling yourselves the guardians of amateur sport. You are the reason the judges are coaching eligibility now.
