The current contentious state of NCAA eligibility in college athletics has another courtroom flash point looming. One day after Ole Miss starting quarterback Trinidad Chambliss was granted a preliminary injunction by a Mississippi judge, allowing him to likely suit up one last time in 2026, Tennessee starter Joey Aguilar sat in front of a judge inside the Knox County (Tenn.) Chancery Court seeking answers on his fate as a college quarterback, hoping for a similar result.
Unlike Chambliss, Aguilar will have to wait until Judge Chris Heagerty can comfortably rule. After Friday afternoon’s hearing, Heagerty said he could not rule from the bench and needed more time to make sure he got this massive decision correct.
Aguilar’s lawsuit against the NCAA challenged the organization’s rules that junior college seasons counted against his years of Division I eligibility. The 24-year-old’s argument for another season is much different than Chambliss’ argument. After Aguilar redshirted a year at City College of San Francisco in 2019, the Bay Area native played two more seasons at Diablo Valley College before transferring to Appalachian State in 2023.
Chambliss was awarded a final year of eligibility after arguing that he should have been granted a medical hardship waiver during his time at Division II powerhouse Ferris State.
What does one definitive result and another significant one still lingering mean for eligibility in college athletics in 2026?
Why are these quarterbacks in their mid-20s actively avoiding the NFL?
Pretty simple: They can make more money next season by returning to school.
Chambliss is a 6-foot quarterback whom The Athletic’s draft experts had pegged as a third-rounder, where contracts start in the $1.3 million range in Year 1, plus a $1.5 million to $1.7 million signing bonus. At Ole Miss, he’s expected to be in the $5 million-$6 million range this season, between revenue sharing and outside NIL deals.
Meanwhile, Aguilar’s attorneys said in his lawsuit that he has a deal from Tennessee for $2 million this season. Not bad, considering he’s no guarantee to even be drafted.
Both have a chance to improve their stock with another year in the SEC — especially Chambliss, who has played only one season at the FBS level. Yes, he’ll be 24 by the time of the 2027 NFL Draft, but that’s not necessarily a deterrent. Recent first-round picks Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr. were both 24 by their rookie seasons.
Why are these cases being heard in state courts instead of federal courts?
Legal challenges against the NCAA are nothing new, but these athlete-eligibility cases are increasingly being filed in state court rather than federal court. Why? The belief that it offers a higher likelihood of a favorable ruling for the athletes.
A lot of these eligibility cases, such as Chambliss’, involve prominent players from prominent universities in the state. They’re being heard in front of judges who are often elected officials — by the local fans of those schools — and who may have even attended college at the school involved.
So a local judge gets to decide whether the star quarterback for the flagship university is eligible to play? How is that fair?
Does it mean these judges are all biased or partial? No. But they are human.
Chancery Judge Robert Whitwell, who presided over the Chambliss case, is a graduate of Ole Miss’ law school. Heagerty, who is hearing the eligibility case for Aguilar, is a double graduate of Tennessee. In some cases, those connections are unavoidable; all three of the current Knox County chancellors went to Tennessee.
These affiliations don’t always deliver the results you might expect. In the recent case of Alabama men’s basketball player Charles Bediako, Tuscaloosa Circuit Court judge Daniel Pruet — an Alabama grad — ruled in favor of the NCAA. Of course, that came after the initial judge, James H. Roberts Jr., granted Bediako a temporary restraining order, allowing him to play. Roberts, who is listed as a University of Alabama athletics donor on The Crimson Tide Foundation’s website, later recused himself.
The Bediako case is a nice counterexample to the favoritism argument; the first judge stepped aside when his relationship with the university, or at least the coverage and commentary surrounding it, was too close-knit to be ignored, and the second judge ruled against his alma mater. But this could also be the exception that proves the rule.
Can Congress do anything to change this?
Can it? Sure. Will it? Don’t hold your breath.
If you’ve been following the NCAA’s legal woes closely, you’ve probably heard the phrase “patchwork of state laws.” It’s been a thorn in the NCAA’s side, whether in eligibility or name, image and likeness cases, and it’s why the NCAA has spent so much time and money lobbying Congress for some kind of federal legislation to provide antitrust exemptions and bring uniformity to the industry. Despite years of effort, the NCAA is still chasing the necessary alignment in Congress to make that happen, and the lawsuits keep coming in the meantime.
These state cases do present certain complications. In the Bediako lawsuit, the NCAA argued that a state court didn’t have the jurisdiction to decide on a case that involved a player crossing state lines to compete. These local rulings tend to offer narrower precedent for future disputes as well. But as long as the NCAA keeps fighting so many different battles in so many different state courtrooms, the broader issue won’t get resolved anytime soon.
How are these different from Diego Pavia’s legal action?
Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia sparked the NCAA’s eligibility issues when he filed a federal lawsuit in 2024, challenging the rule that counted his time in junior college toward his NCAA clock.
By rule, Pavia was out of eligibility after the 2024 season, having reached five years in school to play a maximum of four full seasons. Athletes can play one partial season during those five years.
A federal judge in Tennessee granted Pavia an injunction not long after, allowing him to compete for Vanderbilt for another year while his case slowly made its way through the courts. Pavia’s case still has no trial date set as he prepares for the 2026 NFL Draft, coming off a season when he was the Heisman Trophy runner-up.
Pavia’s case became a blueprint for other athletes. Dozens of lawsuits challenging various eligibility rules have been filed since, and the NCAA has won more preliminary rulings than it has lost.
More recently, athletes have moved away from filing antitrust claims in federal court and instead have sued at the state level, where they have found something of a home-court advantage. As noted, both Chambliss and Aguilar filed in state courts.
Chambliss’ case is very different from Pavia’s. Ole Miss requested a waiver from the NCAA to extend Chambliss’ eligibility one year, claiming that one of the two seasons he did not play in games while at Ferris State should be counted as a medical redshirt. Chambliss, Ole Miss said, was unable to play in 2022 because of persistent respiratory issues related to chronic tonsillitis.
The NCAA denied the waiver because there was no documentation at the time that Chambliss did not play in 2022 because of his medical condition. Since he had been in school for five years (four at Ferris State and one at Ole Miss), his eligibility was complete.
He took Ole Miss to court in Mississippi, claiming the NCAA’s decision was unfair and that being forced to enter the NFL draft this year would potentially cost him millions of dollars. A judge in Mississippi granted Chambliss an injunction, saying the NCAA cannot deem him ineligible for the 2026 season. The NCAA can appeal the ruling.
Aguilar’s case is similar to Pavia’s in that it also challenges rules that count time in junior college toward NCAA eligibility. Aguilar already took advantage of the blanket waiver the NCAA passed in 2025 after the Pavia ruling to provide an extra year of eligibility to former juco athletes. That allowed Aguilar to transfer to Tennessee and start for the Volunteers.
He was even, for a time, part of Pavia’s lawsuit. Tennessee was denied a waiver request for Aguilar by the NCAA, and Aguilar removed himself from the Pavia case and filed his own suit in state court in Tennessee.
What does this mean for eligibility moving forward?
When The Athletic spoke with Montana linebacker Solomon Tuliaupupu, who was just granted a ninth year of NCAA eligibility after a career filled with devastating injuries, he could only laugh when asked about the various states of limbo athletes find themselves in when searching for more years to play: “Who knows?” he said — a very vague and fitting summary that covers every part of this always controversial topic.
The positive result for Chambliss will certainly pave the path for more college athletes to contend that they deserve more years of eligibility based on any number of factors. Once upon a time, extra years granted were strictly based on season-ending injuries. Now, athletes should be able to dissect loopholes within the archaic NCAA eligibility system, which seems to be dissolving slowly in real time.
