UNIVERSITY PARK — With just 12 days remaining before SMU’s season opener on the road at Florida State, the Mustangs’ head coach Rhett Lashlee has his hands full.
Lashlee said Wednesday that he’s received phone calls from at least five of his players from last year’s team who are seeking to make NFL rosters asking about the possibility of returning to the Hilltop.
“I don’t think it’s fair to those guys,” he said. “We have five or six players that were on our team last year that are at NFL camps calling us going, ‘Do you want us back?’ Well, of course we want you back, but we don’t have a roster spot, we don’t have money, and you’re trying to make a team. Now those kids aren’t giving everything they have to making a roster in their one opportunity.”
Major college athletic conferences have begun taking action to prevent this situation, with the Big Ten and SEC banning NFL players from returning to their conferences Tuesday. The ACC’s athletic directors met Wednesday about the topic, and ESPN’s Pete Thamel reports that the ACC plans to join the other conferences with a similar ban to be finalized in the next 24 hours.
The chaos stems from an NCAA rule change this offseason allowing athletes to play five seasons in the span of five years and eliminating redshirt years. A player’s clock now starts when they enroll full-time in college or at the start of the school year immediately after their 19th birthday, whichever happens first.
But the rule only applied to athletes who graduated high school in 2023 or later. Athletes in the Class of 2022, many of whom exhausted their eligibility last season, began filing legal challenges to the rule to obtain a fifth year of eligibility.
That’s led players like tight end Dae’Quan Wright — who signed as an undrafted free agent with the Philadelphia Eagles and was later claimed by the Cleveland Browns — to return to college, joining LSU’s roster after clearing waivers.
Former SMU running back TJ Harden is also trying that approach, entering the transfer portal last week after he was released by the Seahawks, two weeks after he signed with Seattle.
“I think it’s more evidence that we need our government to help us out,” Lashlee said. “We’re sitting here in August talking about our guys coming back from the NFL to play. At some point, enough’s enough. It doesn’t matter what I think is best, what you think is best. We’ve just got to have some stability, some rules that can hold up and we can all live by, whatever those are.”
The leagues’ rules against players of this kind returning to college could still be challenged in court.
He was expected to be drafted in the spring before an MRI at the NFL scouting combine revealed he had a herniated disk that required spinal fusion surgery.
The Colorado court ruling that could’ve paved the way for Moses’ return was temporarily put on hold while the appeals process plays out.
“I know him and his representatives and his family, they’re exhausting all the options,” Lashlee said.