Playing the Fifth: College Athletes versus the NCAA’s Redshirt Rule
Summary
A group of college athletes has filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA’s redshirt rule, arguing that the limitation of four years of competition within a five-year eligibility window violates antitrust law and restricts their ability to earn income from Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals. The athletes advocate for “five years to practice, five years to graduate, five years to play,” emphasizing the lost opportunities caused by the current rule. Previous lawsuits and involvement from the Department of Justice highlight growing legal pressure on the NCAA’s control over athlete eligibility and compensation. This legal battle reflects a broader movement to reform longstanding amateurism rules in college sports and ensure athletes have fair access to both competition and earning potential.
College sports feels like a cosmic rulebook someone forgot to update, and that’s not a complaint—just a recognition that the weirdest systems spark the most interesting legal challenges.
Sportico recently spotlighted a class-action lawsuit—filed early September—that challenges the NCAA’s “one redshirt year” in its five-year eligibility window. Ten college athletes, including Vanderbilt’s Langston Patterson, Issa Ouattara, and former UH QB Brayden Schager, argue the NCAA’s rule violates antitrust law by limiting their ability to compete—and, crucially, to earn NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) income (Athletic Business).
The demand is simple in its genius: “Five years to practice, five years to graduate, five years to play.” That bold mantra underscores a fundamental tension: the NCAA grants athletes a five-year clock, but only awards four years of actual competition. That fifth year is reserved for—what, exactly? Bein’ a cheerleader for your own team? That feels like a wasted stanza in a poetic five-part symphony (CBSSports.com).
This isn’t unprecedented: The lawsuits of Diego Pavia and Zakai Zeigler laid the groundwork. Pavia successfully got an injunction, arguing his JUCO years shouldn’t count against NCAA eligibility—because they seriously tinker with an athlete’s ability to compete and market themselves (Front Office Sports). Zeigler, meanwhile, argued that being denied a fifth year just because he didn’t redshirt penalizes hardworking athletes. He wasn’t trying to game the system—he was playing every chance he got—and losing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) in NIL opportunity as a result (Reuters).
The Department of Justice even chimed in, poking a finger at the NCAA’s argument that eligibility rules aren’t commercial in nature. DOJ says: oh, but they absolutely are, especially when athletes’ earning potential is tied up in how long they can actually compete (PYMNTS.com).
You can see this as part of a slow-but-steady dethronement of NCAA amateurism. Think back to the O’Bannon and Alston cases, where courts finally looked at the NCAA’s control over athlete compensation and said, “That’s anti-free-market nonsense,” opening the door for more wrestling over eligibility fences (Wikipedia).
The new suit isn’t merely about one extra game—it’s about flipping the field on who controls opportunity, income, and fairness in college sports.
There’s something deliciously subversive about demanding logic when the logical frame was designed decades ago in a completely different world. The NCAA’s rules were built before social media, before multi-million-dollar NIL deals, before most athletes even knew what a JUCO was.
Here’s the playful and nerdy thought: what if the NCAA’s redshirt rule is the college version of “Schrödinger’s eligibility”? Athletes exist in a superposition—allowed to train, to live, to learn, but one year remains intangible: neither fully playing nor fully sidelined.
The suit stakes a claim: collapse the wavefunction. Let all five years play out. Make earning opportunities real. Let performance—not bureaucracy—be the arbiter.
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