COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – As college athletics seasons begin to rev their engines for the 2026-27 school year, the transfer portal has become a lonely place.
As of Thursday afternoon, only one name resides in the portal, which is not currently open to any athletic programs.
Aggie guard Bryson Warren is the lone name among Division I athletes in the portal after earning the right to enter through a temporary restraining order issued in Brazos County Wednesday.
The 6-foot-3, 191-pound guard entered his name into the database Wednesday, seeking “flexibility of leaving or staying,” according to a source with knowledge of the decision.
Warren filed a petition for the restraining order against the NCAA early Wednesday and received the TRO approximately an hour later. Chiefly, the order prevents the NCAA and SEC from sanctioning Warren, A&M or any other team for which he is rostered, on grounds of eligibility.
“The NCAA is hereby ordered to declare Mr. Warren eligible to participate in men’s basketball at Texas A&M University or any other NCAA member institution during the 2026-27 season,” the order reads.
The order also allows Warren to transfer to any NCAA program. Entering the portal, even if Warren intends to stay at A&M, has been a common action for athletes in similar eligibility cases in order to keep all options open while the TRO is in effect.
Warren has attempted to gain eligibility after spending the last three seasons in the NBA G League with the Sioux Falls Skyforce and the Westchester Knicks. He entered the 2024 NBA draft but went undrafted. He never signed to play at the college level.
According to his petition, Warren was denied eligibility with the NCAA after a preliminary attempt in May 2026, a month after he committed to the Aggies. A&M filed two more waiver requests on behalf of Warren on May 26, both of which were denied.
This year, the NCAA fortified its rules around signing athletes who had professional contracts, but have allowed some who have G League experience or played professionally overseas to participate.
In his original petition, Warren’s legal team argues the NCAA violated antitrust law by its lack of uniformity when offering eligibility waivers to athletes who have previous professional experience. The petition cites more than 100 former professional basketball players who have competed in NCAA Division I basketball. Of those, Thierry Darlan (G League to Santa Clara), London Johnson (G League to Louisville), Abdullah Ahmed (G League to BYU), James Nnaji (NBA and overseas professional leagues to Baylor) and Urban Klavzar (overseas professional leagues to Florida) were singled out as similar to Warren’s case. All five were granted waivers.
Boise State sports law professor Sam Ehrlich said the majority of the petition is structured similarly to others that have been filed for this kind of eligibility claim, including former A&M post Rashaun Agee’s TRO petition last year.
“It argues state antitrust law,” Ehrlich said. “It argues the breach of contract theories that we’ve been seeing across the country from a lot of these different cases. I’ll note that it’s the same attorneys who actually moved Rashaun Agee’s case across the finish line. So, kind of shows that they definitely modeled it I’m sure after that case, given the success of that case.”
However, the most notable difference in the restraining order is that it bars the SEC as well as the NCAA from enforcing eligibility rules. Warren and his legal team did not include the SEC in their petition, but A&M’s conference was added into the TRO by Judge John Brick.
Tuesday, a day before the petition was filed, the SEC issued a new policy regarding the eligibility of players with professional experience. Among other qualifications, the new policy prevents schools from rostering athletes that have signed G League contracts or have been listed on G League rosters. According to a report from On3.com, penalties for violating the policy include a suspension of the head coach for half of a season and a fine of 50% of the program’s annual budget. Commissioner Greg Sankey has sole jurisdiction for issuing penalties.
Member university presidents and chancellors voted unanimously to approve the policy change, according to reports. Every school, save LSU, voted to approve the penalties, with LSU abstaining from the vote.
Ehrlich said this case could be the forum in which the SEC decides to argue the legality of its new policy, as this is the first TRO he’s seen issued that joins the NCAA and the conference in the eligibility sanction ban.
Warren’s case will be heard in the Brazos County Courthouse on Sept. 4.
“I imagine the SEC is probably going to try to intervene here and try to say, ‘We weren’t served here. We were not part of this lawsuit,’” Ehrlich said. “We’re not named as the defendant in this lawsuit, so you can’t bind us in this regard,’ and that’s going to create something of a fight. Are they actually aligned with the NCAA to that degree, where you can kind of bind them within the same thing, even if you’re not declaring them as a defendant? And maybe they get out as a defendant later. So, I think we’ll definitely see that in the injunction hearing and around the injunction as well and we’ll probably definitely see it on appeal as well, if the injunction is granted.”
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