Key Takeaways:
- Current Rule – 2 Seasons Max. JuCo seasons are counted against NCAA eligibility, so many JuCo transfers arrive in D1 with only two seasons left.
- NIL incents extended JuCo Eligibility Requests. In the NIL and revenue-sharing era, JuCo-experienced athletes have strong incentives to extend eligibility, fueling lawsuits and injunction requests.
- The Court isn’t Unified. Conflicting court rulings and the NCAA’s one-time 2025 JuCo waiver are widening scrutiny of the broader “four seasons in five years” model and its roster ripple effects.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) long-standing eligibility framework – five years to play four seasons – has come under renewed legal pressure, this time from athletes who began their collegiate careers in junior college (JuCo). At the center of the controversy is Diego Pavia, a quarterback whose path from JuCo to Division I has become a flashpoint in the broader debate over how the NCAA counts seasons of competition. His case and others like it are forcing courts, schools and the NCAA itself to confront a fundamental question: Should time spent at a junior college count against student-athlete’s eligibility to compete in a Division I program?
This article is the second in a three-part series examining the shifting legal and regulatory landscape of NCAA eligibility. The first installment, The New Eligibility Frontier: NIL, Revenue Sharing, and the Strain on NCAA Waiver Rules, explored how name, image and likeness (NIL)-era economics are reshaping the waiver process and exposing fault lines in the NCAA’s traditional eligibility framework. This second piece turns to a related pressure point: the treatment of JuCo seasons under the NCAA’s “five-year clock” and four-season limit.
How does the NCAA treat JuCo time with respect to D1 eligibility?
For now, the NCAA considers time spent in JuCo to be the same as time spent in a Division 1 program. NCAA bylaws require student-athletes to complete all seasons of participation within five calendar years of their initial full-time collegiate enrollment. That five-year clock begins ticking the moment an athlete enrolls full time at any collegiate institution – whether a two-year junior college, a four-year NCAA school or even a non-NCAA program.
The bylaws further limit student-athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition in a given sport, albeit subject to some exceptions, including allowing football players to compete in up to four games without using a season of eligibility. Notably, JuCo student-athletes do not receive the same consideration, making even a single snap count as a year of eligibility used.
The five-year and four-season rules operate in tandem, effectively giving student-athletes an extra year to redshirt, recover from injury or otherwise abstain from competition while enrolled in school. For student-athletes who compete in JuCo, typically two years of competition, the rules effectively limit their Division 1 eligibility to two seasons in three years, assuming the student-athlete only spent two years at the JuCo.
Why are student athletes challenging the NCAA in court?
The rules are clear, but their application to JuCo athletes has become a source of contention. For athletes who begin at JuCos, often for academic or developmental reasons, this can mean arriving at a Division I program with only two seasons of eligibility remaining. In the era of NIL and revenue-sharing, prominent student-athletes who competed in JuCo – e.g., Pavia – stand to lose significant compensation, in some cases millions of dollars.
Pavia’s case, filed in federal court in 2024, argued that the NCAA’s treatment of JuCo seasons as equivalent to Division I seasons unfairly shortened his career and limited his ability to benefit from NIL opportunities. He played two seasons at New Mexico Military Institute, two at New Mexico State and one at Vanderbilt. When the NCAA informed him that his eligibility had expired, he sought a preliminary injunction to continue playing. Pavia’s case was largely based on the income he would earn from additional years of eligibility.
Pavia’s request for a preliminary injunction was granted by a federal judge in December 2024, allowing him to play the 2025 football season. Five days later, the NCAA responded and issued a one-time blanket waiver for similarly situated athletes. This effectively mooted the NCAA’s own appeal because Pavia received the relief he sought: a guarantee that he could participate in the 2025 season. In October 2025, the Sixth Circuit dismissed the NCAA’s appeal as moot, though the underlying lawsuit survived and is still being litigated.
Pavia’s case and the NCAA’s response have resulted in a growing list of legal challenges brought against the NCAA by student-athletes seeking additional eligibility based on their JuCo participation.
Have student-athletes succeeded in court against the NCAA?
The NCAA’s decision to grant the blanket JuCo waiver for the 2025 season may have had the unintended consequence of fueling similar lawsuits by other JuCo student-athletes who were not able to take advantage of the additional eligibility granted by the NCAA. These student-athletes have experienced mixed results in challenging the NCAA in court.
In New Jersey, Rutgers defensive back Jett Elad won a preliminary injunction in April 2025 after the NCAA counted his JuCo redshirt year against his eligibility. But a circuit court reversed that decision in November 2025, holding that the trial court had failed to define the relevant antitrust market. Elad sought and received a temporary restraining order allowing him to play in his team’s last game of the season after the circuit court that vacated the preliminary injunction denied the NCAA’s motion to stay the temporary restraining order. Similar to Elad’s case, another federal circuit court vacated a preliminary injunction this month, which previously allowed four West Virginia football players who spent time in JuCo to play the 2025 season. Even though these players ultimately lost in court, by the time the appellate court vacated the injunctions, the season had already ended.
Football players and other fall sport athletes seeking eligibility in court may face an easier path because they only need to secure a preliminary injunction to effectively gain a season of eligibility. In Nevada, Tatuo Martinson, a running back at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, secured a preliminary injunction from a federal district court in September 2025 after the NCAA denied him a third Division I season based on his prior JuCo participation. Cortez Braham Jr., another JuCo transfer, won a similar injunction in the same jurisdiction. Both Martinson and Braham were able to participate in the 2025 season for their respective schools.
On the other hand, Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar, who redshirted at a California JuCo in 2019 and later played at Appalachian State and Tennessee, was denied a preliminary injunction by a Tennessee state court in February 2026. The ruling effectively ended his college career, despite his argument that the NCAA’s counting of his JuCo seasons was unfair. Aguilar’s case stands out from the others because he sued the NCAA in state court under state law after severing himself from the Pavia federal suit.
The result in Aguilar’s case stands in stark contrast to that of Trinidad Chambliss, who successfully sought an injunction seeking additional eligibility from a state court in Mississippi. Aguilar and the other JuCo plaintiffs differ from Chambliss because they are challenging the NCAA rules themselves, usually under antitrust laws, while Chambliss challenged the NCAA’s application of its own rules (i.e., its denial of his hardship waiver).
How has the Pavia case affected student-athletes outside JuCo?
In the aftermath of the NCAA’s one-time blanket JuCo waiver, non-JuCo student-athletes have been emboldened to challenge NCAA eligibility rules in court. For instance, a broader class action – Patterson v. NCAA – was filed in September 2025, challenging the entire “four seasons in five years” structure. A federal court denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction in January 2026, citing recent appellate guidance that raised the bar for antitrust claims.
Student-athletes who competed in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) or Division II are also filing lawsuits to get extra years of eligibility, arguing that participation outside Division I should not automatically exhaust the NCAA’s five‑year eligibility clock, particularly where athletes later transfer and compete at a higher level. For example, Purdue lineman Bakyne Coly challenged the NCAA’s decision to count his NAIA seasons toward his eligibility after he transferred to Purdue, while Wisconsin cornerback Nyzier Fourqurean similarly argued that his Division II seasons should not bar an additional year at the Division I level. But the courts have not treated these suits kindly; Fourqurean dropped his suit late last year after an appellate court overruled an injunction previously granted to him, and Coly’s injunction was denied by a federal court.
How do challenges to JuCo rules affect the broader landscape?
These disputes underscore a fundamental shift in the economics of college athletics. In the NIL era, student-athletes – particularly those in football and basketball – can earn significant income while still in school, in some cases more than they might make in the early stages of a professional career. For student-athletes who do not have professional athletics prospects, competing at the college level for five- or six-figure compensation is an attractive alternative to traditional entry-level jobs. This reality has created a powerful incentive to maximize eligibility, making the NCAA’s treatment of JuCo seasons a high-stakes issue, especially given that athletes competing at a JuCo level are less likely to compete professionally.
In addition to its legal arguments seeking to protect current JuCo eligibility rules, the NCAA has argued that ruling in favor of these student-athletes would have devastating impacts on college athletics, especially for current high school athletes. The NCAA envisions a scenario where athletes who are not good enough to compete professionally but are good enough to earn significant compensation in college essentially operate as professional students. As discussed above, this path could be particularly attractive for student-athletes without professional athletics prospects.
The NCAA warned that student-athletes could compete in at least 18 seasons of intercollegiate athletics – two in JuCo, four in D3, four in D2, four in NAIA and four in D1. In that scenario, the athlete would be 32 years old and competing in a Division 1 program. There are no real-world examples of this occurring, and while this argument is only theoretical, it accurately describes how athletes can leverage NCAA eligibility rules to compete for longer than five seasons, which they have a direct financial incentive to do in the era of NIL and revenue sharing.
Even if the parade of horribles advanced by the NCAA never comes to fruition, the ability of student-athletes to game the NCAA’s eligibility rules could have devastating consequences for student-athletes currently in high school or middle school. In the past, the five-year rule created natural turnover on college teams and provided roster spots for incoming college freshmen. In the NIL and revenue-sharing era, incoming teenage freshmen compete for spots against fifth-, sixth- and seventh-year seniors between 22 and 25 years of age. This problem is only exacerbated by the roster limits the NCAA imposed on schools starting last year. High school athletes have faced leaner prospects in competing for college teams since COVID-19, and if the NCAA eligibility landscape does not change in the coming years, fewer and fewer high schoolers will have the opportunity to compete in college sports or earn income based on their athletic ability.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, the ongoing legal battles over JuCo eligibility rules continue to shape the future for student-athletes. The NCAA’s approach – counting JuCo seasons toward both the four-season limit and starting the five-year eligibility clock at first full-time enrollment – remains a central point of contention, particularly after the NCAA granted the JuCo blanket waiver in 2025. This waiver was temporary, and the fundamental rules have not changed, but mounting litigation, intensifying calls for reform and the NCAA’s decision to grant the waiver have only increased the pressure. As these cases unfold, the NCAA faces growing scrutiny over whether its eligibility framework fairly accommodates those who begin their athletic careers at two-year colleges, which is part of the broader scrutiny facing the NCAA’s overall eligibility framework in the NIL era.
