Embodying some of the bluntest language yet by a judge in repudiating the NCAA’s eligibility guidelines, U.S. District Judge Anne Traum last Friday issued her written order granting Nevada outfielder Noah Blythe a sixth season of college baseball.
The ruling is a reminder that some judges view antitrust lawsuits over Division I athlete eligibility as fundamentally a question of economic competition—namely, an athlete selling their services to the marketplace of college buyers—rather than an educational or social issue.
Traum orally granted an injunction earlier in February, but Friday’s ruling explained her reasoning.
As the judge detailed, Blythe’s collegiate career has been disrupted for reasons beyond his control. His 2021 season at Division II Hawaii Pacific was limited to 21 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Blythe then transferred to University of Antelope Valley, an NAIA school; there, he played three seasons during which he broke his hand, and the school declared bankruptcy and permanently closed. Blythe, 23, returned to Hawaii Pacific for his 2025 season and is now at Nevada. Blythe obtained a COVID-19 waiver for his first season, but that allowed him to play a fifth season, not a sixth.
Traum not only granted Blythe an injunction to play in 2026 but also rebuked the NCAA’s restriction of eligibility to four seasons of a sport in five years as especially problematic in the current college sports world. Colleges can directly pay athletes through revenue sharing, college athletes sell their labor services to schools in the same vein as employees, and athletes who are also graduate students populate rosters.
The five-year rule, Traum wrote, “causes commercial harm by denying” otherwise qualified athletes access “to the financial, academic and professional benefits of employment at a D-I institution.” Some of those benefits are also uniquely situated in college. For example, D-I college football is essentially a development league as “the sole pathway to NFL opportunities.”
Traum also wrote that NIL compensation opportunities are “not available elsewhere.” Although NIL deals are possible for NAIA, D-II, D-III and JUCO athletes, the ruling cites data showing that over 99% of NIL deals go to D-I athletes. To that point, “despite playing at an elite level” in NAIA and D-II, Blythe was never offered an NIL deal.
Traum wasn’t persuaded by defenses offered by the NCAA. The association argued that eligibility rules define what it means to be a student-athlete in college. Ordinarily, a college student leaves and ideally graduates after four or five years and then moves on to another phase of life. Arguably, a college athlete should have a similar path and not stick the university playing sports years thereafter.
The judge found that argument problematic in the context of the five-year rule since the NCAA allows “numerous exceptions” to this rule. Those exceptions include time spent playing a different sport on a professional level, military service, religious missionary work and playing sports during a post-graduate year after high school. As Traum sees it, these exceptions swallow the rule since they indicate that “age and experience are not essential to the NCAA’s ‘unique product’ of college sports.”
Aligning athlete eligibility with the ordinary trajectory of a college student struck Traum as problematic for additional reasons, too. She wrote that aligning eligibility with earning a college degree doesn’t “hold water” when eligible D-I athletes include students who have already earned their college degree and are pursuing a graduate degree. Stated differently, if student athlete eligibility should be linked to when a student graduates college, graduate students wouldn’t be eligible.
Traum added that even if “the goal of aligning academics and athletics” is important on a social or educational basis, that’s not relevant in antitrust analysis, which focuses on competition in an economic market (here, a labor market of athletes selling their services to colleges). She wrote that relevant considerations in antitrust analysis include the impact of the five-year rule on “employment, wages or profit,” and she pointed out that the rule “prevents D-I institutions from hiring the student-athletes it wants.”
For similar reasons, Traum wasn’t moved by the NCAA expressing worry about seasoned college athletes such as Blythe clogging rosters and denying opportunities to freshmen.
The judge again stressed that the relevant considerations in antitrust analysis aren’t supposed social goods, but instead factors that shed light on economic competition. She highlighted “the basic economic principle that greater competition in a labor market generally leads to better outcomes for workers,” including higher pay and greater benefits. Traum also found the underlying worry unpersuasive since colleges already use the transfer portal to “fill roster spots with experienced athletes from other schools” and thus take away roster spots from incoming freshmen.
In addition, Traum stressed the “time-sensitive” nature of NIL deals and other compensation for college athletes tied to playing college sports. Given that fewer than 2% of student-athletes turn pro, the chance to earn compensation for athletic services will end in college for most college athletes. It’s possible that Blythe will go on to a pro baseball career, but if not, getting to play for Nevada in 2026 is especially valuable. As of Sunday, Blythe, who was represented by attorneys Mackenzie Robinson and Steven Caloiaro of Dickinson Wright, had played in three games for the Wolf Pack in the 2026 season.