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<\/p>\nFor years now, I\u2019ve searched for a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to those unfamiliar.<\/p>\n
How do you best help people understand the instability of a structure and system so profitable and popular?<\/p>\n
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\u201cEverything seems to be going well. What\u2019s all the hubbub about?\u201d they\u2019ll say.<\/p>\n
Perhaps they are right. Perhaps the cries of chaos from stakeholders are only necessary growing pains for an entity evolving from amateur to professional.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday afternoon, for a few fleeting moments, a realtime snapshot existed that, more than anything, highlights the absurd state of the industry.<\/p>\n
Within a county courthouse, situated in the tiniest of towns in the most rural of areas in north Mississippi, a 23-year-old quarterback\u2019s collegiate eligibility \u2014 his Heisman Trophy hopes, his team\u2019s championship aspirations, his more than $5 million in promised compensation \u2014 hinged on a decision from a 70-plus-year-old chancery court judge who just so happens to hold a law degree from the school, Ole Miss, that stands to benefit most from his ruling.<\/p>\n
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This is less than ideal.<\/p>\n
Set aside your feelings on the decision from Judge Robert Q. Whitwell to grant quarterback Trinidad Chambliss an extra year of eligibility. Remove the names and school logos. Put away your inherent bias and partiality. Look at the whole.<\/p>\n
Is it healthy for college sports to have the eligibility of athletes determined within courtrooms across America?<\/p>\n
In fact, as Whitwell, his Southern accent thick enough to peel paint, completed the 90-minute reading of his order and subsequent decision, the judge grew emotional, unable to keep within the joyous feelings of being the man who permitted Chambliss \u2014 by all accounts a standup human being and brilliant footballer \u2014 another year of collegiate eligibility, another chance to chase dreams, to earn millions.<\/p>\n
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It was a scene ripped from the pages of a novel from famed Mississippi-reared author John Grisham.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trinidad Chambliss will be back in uniform for the Ole Miss Rebels next season after Thursday’s eligibility ruling. (Photo by CFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
(CFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to argue that this is one of the most compelling stories in recent college football history: a Michigan-born kid so lightly recruited that he began his career in Division II, did well enough there (Ferris State) to earn a spot playing major college football in the South as a backup, before replacing the starter midseason and leading the Ole Miss Rebels to their best season in more than 60 years.<\/p>\n
The latest chapter came Thursday, within that courtroom as part of a lawsuit against an organization, the NCAA, that denied Chambliss three different times in the last two months an additional year of eligibility \u2014 all over claims that illness (lingering tonsillitis, plus mononucleosis and COVID) kept him from playing in 2022.<\/p>\n
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Let\u2019s not get bogged down on the facts of the case. Here\u2019s the gist: Over a five-hour hearing Thursday, Chambliss and his attorneys argued before the judge that he was sick enough to warrant a medical redshirt for that season; the NCAA argued he did not produce enough medical evidence to back up that claim; the judge sided with the quarterback.<\/p>\n
There is something more important here.<\/p>\n
This case was different from many other judicial decisions deeming the NCAA in violation of antitrust law. This was not an \u201cantitrust\u201d case. It was a \u201ccontract\u201d case.<\/p>\n
In fact, this case may have cracked a door to a new avenue of legal challenges against the NCAA\u2019s rules. Chambliss\u2019 attorneys, instead of suing over antitrust claims (more difficult to prove), sued the NCAA over breaching its contract with Ole Miss as a member university of which all athletes, including Chambliss, are third-party beneficiaries.<\/p>\n
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In layman\u2019s terms, the NCAA \u201cfailed,\u201d as the judge said, to uphold its membership agreement with Ole Miss, which states that it must \u201ccommit to the well-being and development of student-athletes\u201d and apply its rules in \u201cgood faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
By not granting Chambliss a sixth year of eligibility, the NCAA breached its contract and acted in bad faith, causing harm to Chambliss in a number of ways in which the judge detailed, including the loss of compensation in what he described as the new \u201clabor market\u201d of college sports; loss of an additional year to develop for the NFL (something that Ole Miss assistant coach Joe Judge, a witness in the case, stressed during his time on the stand); and, in an interesting twist, the loss of college football\u2019s fan base in witnessing one of the best players in the country, the judge said.<\/p>\n
As in many of these cases, the NCAA is made to be the bad guy here. Evil. Sinister.<\/p>\n
But there is something important to remember: The NCAA is charged with enforcing rules and standards that are created by member schools. As it turns out, a committee of school administrators \u2014 not the NCAA staff \u2014 denied Chambliss\u2019 waiver appeal.<\/p>\n
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The root of the denial has gone mostly unreported, but here it is: Committee members requested to see practice logs from Chambliss\u2019 2022 season as a way to determine the severity of his illness. However, since 2022, Ferris State has switched operation systems that archive practice logs. The records were lost or were so difficult and costly enough to obtain that they never made it to the committee.<\/p>\n
The NCAA staff\u2019s original denial of Chambliss\u2019 eligibility waiver in December preceded the denied appeal from the committee in early January and triggered the lawsuit to be filed soon afterward. And then, on the morning of Thursday\u2019s hearing, Chambliss\u2019 last resort for eligibility through the NCAA \u2014 a \u201creconsideration\u201d \u2014 was rejected.<\/p>\n
It mattered not, of course.<\/p>\n
Within a courtroom, from a local judge, another college athlete received additional eligibility.<\/p>\n
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Since Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia successfully sued the NCAA in December of 2024, Chambliss is the 11th player to receive an injunction for extended eligibility in 55 lawsuits filed. In 34 of those cases a judge ruled in favor of the NCAA in a preliminary judgement, or the case was voluntarily dismissed.<\/p>\n
About a dozen cases are still pending, including one coming Friday, when Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar and attorneys plan to argue for an eighth year of eligibility before, yes, a Tennessee judge.<\/p>\n
Of the 11 successful injunctions granted to extend a player\u2019s eligibility, seven of them have come in state court from a local judge \u2014 a new way that attorneys have found to reach a decision that most benefits their clients, moving away from filing federally.<\/p>\n
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On Thursday, Chambliss\u2019 counsel paved the way, perhaps, for another avenue to test and eventually topple NCAA standards.<\/p>\n
In its statement in reaction to the news, the NCAA says the decision illustrates the \u201cimpossible situation\u201d created from differing court decisions in lawsuits supported by its member schools attacking the very rules that they created. These \u201cconflicting court decisions,\u201d the statement read, make \u201cpartnering with Congress essential to provide stability\u201d \u2014 another plea to lawmakers to adopt federal legislation to govern the industry.<\/p>\n
At the very least, all of this has provided something personally useful: I\u2019ve found a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to those unfamiliar.<\/p>\n
A courthouse. Congress. And an infinity of billable hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years now, I\u2019ve searched for a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[408,5969,7,49,48,899,65456],"class_list":{"0":"post-748901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-collegiate-eligibility","9":"tag-eligibility","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ole-miss","14":"tag-trinidad-chambliss"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116062603080768877","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}