Not that long ago, there was a time when the NCAA felt like a committee that needed another committee for decision making. Under Mark Emmert, schools begged for direction. Now, under president Charlie Baker, the NCAA is sprinting toward reform. And right in the middle of this latest 5-in-5 eligibility reform is a former Heisman winner stepping in with a specific warning.

“If the NCAA moves eligibility to 5 years to play 5 seasons from when you graduate high school or turn 19 years old,” Robert Griffin III posted on social media. “They have to make an exemption for religious based schools like BYU and UTAH who routinely have student athletes go on 1-2 year mission trips before they ever play.”

Each school is different. Trying to force them into the same eligibility timeline without flexibility would break things. RG3 is a Heisman winner who carried Baylor out of irrelevance and into the national spotlight. He understands development, timing, and opportunity. 

Religious schools like BYU have mission trips instilled into the program’s identity. These missions usually last 18 to 24 months, and they’re not rare. And if the clock starts at 19, and a player leaves for a two-year mission immediately after high school, they’re already behind before they even start playing.

More than half of BYU’s student body participates in mission trips with some of them going right after high school and others leaving mid-career and coming back older, stronger, and sometimes better. So when RG3 pushed for an exception, he’s asking the NCAA not to erase a working system. 

Under current rules, athletes, especially at schools like BYU, can keep their eligibility on pause while they go for missionary work. The pitch from Charlie Baker is to keep redshirts, waivers, and case-by-case exceptions at bay and replace it with something more simple. Per Pete Thamel’s report, the NCAA president told ESPN that he’s feeling “pretty optimistic” that this proposal would happen. 

Student-athletes will get five years to play five seasons. There will be no extensions and gray areas. This rule likely won’t be retroactive so as to protect the system moving forward.

“If you’ve used up your eligibility, you’ve used it up,” Baker said.

The NCAA is trying to create a level playing field in a sport that has never been level. Recent eligibility lawsuits showed that without a proper reform, it could spiral out of control.

“The goal here was to come up with something that was a lot simpler and sort of familiar,” he added. “If you think about it, we all grow up playing sports and our kids grow up playing sports and it’s U-10, U-12, U-15, U-18, U-20, U-22 leagues, right? The idea of an age-based dynamic or parameter is pretty familiar. That’s the way most of amateur sports is organized in who gets to participate.”

But even this new “age-based” model will include exceptions for religious missions, military service, and maternity. Now, this proposal is already winning favor.

Approval floods in for the new 5-in-5 eligibility rule

A lot of people inside the sport are buying in, including WCC commissioner Stu Jackson.

“This is probably the best option that we have at this point,” he said. “Five in five years doesn’t absolve the NCAA from potential litigation, but it certainly gives us the best fighting chance to avoid it. I’m very supportive of it.”

“It’s great,” another power conference front-office director said. “Helps just stabilize a lot of things. I’ve always said the issue with college football right now is the guidelines just constantly change, so there’s no consistency. Hoping this just gives a baseline to what to follow and we can continue to plan for the future.”

The pace of this proposal is as striking as the proposal itself. The NCAA Division I Board of Directors is quickly pushing this forward with the next key meeting set for May 22. There’s optimism this could be done within months. Still, Charlie Baker himself admitted there are still details to sort out. Right now, most agree on the destination but the path is still messy. And if this 5-in-5 era is going to work, it can’t ignore the programs that don’t fit neatly into a generic model.