Once again, another change may be on the horizon in college sports. The NCAA Board of Governors, the highest governance body of the NCAA, will reportedly discuss a rule change regarding the eligibility of athletes in early 2025.
NCAA To Discuss Allowing Five Years Of Eligibility For Athletes
As the college football season comes to a close within the next month, groundbreaking news has been reported, per an NCAA official.
The NCAA Board of Governors will discuss the allowance of five years of eligibility for athletes of all sports moving forward. The topic will be an ongoing discussion in the early months of 2025.
Currently, all athletes have five years to compete in four seasons in the NCAA, a redshirt season being the extra year.
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The current redshirt rule allows an athlete to appear in four games without burning a year of eligibility. Often, the redshirt year is used in an athlete’s freshman season.
The recent uptick in fifth- and sixth-year college football seniors has largely been due to the 2020 pandemic. The NCAA granted all college football players an extra year of eligibility due to the shortened 2020 season.
Now, that may become the norm.
The introduction of NIL has also increased the appeal of staying in college for as many years as possible.
A loophole for extra years of eligibility is through a medical hardship redshirt. 25-year-old Utah Utes quarterback Cam Rising was recently granted an eighth season of eligibility due to multiple lost seasons due to injury, though he will not be back with the Utes in 2025.
Miami Hurricanes tight end Cam McCormick went viral on social media ahead of the 2024 season — at 26 years old, he was entering an NCAA-record ninth season.
Vanderbilt Commodores quarterback Diego Pavia went to court to snag his fourth year of NCAA eligibility. After playing his first two seasons at a junior college, Pavia exhausted his eligibility across two seasons with the New Mexico State Aggies before transferring to Vanderbilt for his final year in 2024 — or so nearly everyone in college football thought.
Pavia was able to obtain a waiver from the NCAA for one more season of eligibility, arguing that they were violating an anti-trust law by counting junior college eligibility towards a players Division 1 eligibility. He’ll be back leading the Commodores in 2025.
More questions surrounding college football include whether or not to correct the transfer portal window opening before the end of the postseason, the structure of the recruiting calendar, and the implications of Pavia’s ruling.
It’s safe to say the NCAA Board of Governors has a lot to discuss in early 2025.
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