{"id":750210,"date":"2026-02-13T22:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T22:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/750210\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T22:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T22:10:12","slug":"tennessee-qb-leaves-court-with-no-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/750210\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee QB leaves court with no ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee football<\/a> quarterback Joey Aguilar<\/a> and his trio of lawyers entered Knox County Chancery Court at 1:18 p.m. Friday. <\/p>\n

More than two hours later, judge Chris Heagarty adjourned court with no decision on Aguilar\u2019s pursuit of an injunction. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t rule from the bench on this,\u201d Heagarty said. \u201cThese issues are far reaching.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Heagarty vowed to Aguilar that he would have a decision in short order, noting Aguilar was under a time constraint.\u00a0He extended the temporary restraining order, allow Aguilar to be part of the Vols as he works through his decision. Heagarty granted Aguilar the temporary restraining order<\/a> on Feb. 4.<\/p>\n

Heagarty opened the hearing at 1:28. The tone of the hearing quickly took shape. The NCAA said prior to the hearing that the court \u201cbled orange\u201d, but it clearly didn\u2019t feel that way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The point of the hearing never really centered around junior college eligibility. The focus was on money and money lost by not having another year of eligibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The opening statement from Aguilar\u2019s lawyer, Cam Norris, went for nearly an hour.\u00a0Heagarty interacted with Norris on numerous occasions asking several follow-up questions to points made in Aguilar\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t base my decision on conjecture \u2026 you don\u2019t hand out injunctions like popcorn. I need evidence,\u201d Heagarty said.<\/p>\n

At 2:23, the NCAA lawyers made their opening statement, making it very clear that the case is about an injunction and under NCAA rules Aguilar is not eligible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two minutes in, Heagarty started his interaction with NCAA lawyer Taylor Askew by asking questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Heagarty noted during his questioning of the NCAA that Aguilar would suffer damages if not allowed to play. But neither side has a market value to know what the definitive damage amount is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Askew, a Knoxville native and Tennessee fan, closed his opening statement but turning to Aguilar and thanked him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Tennessee football,\u201d said Askew, a Tennessee law school graduate. \u201cMy kids love watching (Aguilar) play. But Tennessee is better than this. We don\u2019t have to go to court to get our guy back (on the field). We don\u2019t do that in Tennessee. He is a hero in Tennessee. We didn\u2019t know who he was until Nico left.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can make that decision without taking anything away from Mr. Aguilar. You\u2019re a hero to kids around this city. But it doesn\u2019t mean we break the rules. It doesn\u2019t mean the Vols get something everybody else doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in November, Aguilar attached himself to a lawsuit led by Diego Pavia<\/a> seeking another year of eligibility on the basis that his second junior college season shouldn\u2019t count against his NCAA eligibility.<\/p>\n

Aguilar asked for a voluntary dismissal from that case on Jan. 30 to file his own separate case in Knox County Court. Aguilar was granted the dismissal from the federal case. He immediately filed his own case locally. He sought a temporary restraining order against the NCAA. Aguilar received the temporary restraining order, which allowed him to return to team activities until his injunction lawsuit could be heard and ruled on.<\/p>\n

Aguilar threw for 3,565 yards and 24 touchdowns in 13 games as Tennessee\u2019s starting quarterback in 2025. He led the Vols to an 8-5 record.<\/p>\n

The Vols have a roster spot and NIL money in place for Aguilar to return, his lawsuit stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cTennessee has a spot for him on the roster and would welcome him back,\u201d Aguilar\u2019s complaint filed on January 30th stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis compensation for playing college football in 2026 would be approximately $2 million. So by counting his JUCO years against him, the NCAA is depriving Aguilar of millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit noted Aguilar\u2019s season with the Vols as the only time he has been able to earn \u201csignificant money\u201d playing football, making more than $1 million from the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2025 season also marked the first time the California native earned significant money for playing football,\u201d the lawsuit stated. \u201cFrom 2019 to 2023, he earned nothing. But in one season at Tennessee, Aguilar earned over $1 million.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aguilar is recovering from shoulder surgery where he had a benign tumor removed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennessee football quarterback Joey Aguilar and his trio of lawyers entered Knox County Chancery Court at 1:18 p.m.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,1788,1209],"class_list":{"0":"post-750210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-regwall","12":"tag-tennessee-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750210","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=750210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}