A group of athletes won a lawsuit against the NCAA in their battle for an additional year of eligibility. It was not only a massive loss for the NCAA, but it also made the new five-for-five eligibility rule appear deficient. And while it represents a major win for the athletes, the attorney who won the ruling identified the chaos as a situation the governing body created to its advantage in its advocacy for the Protect College Sports Act.

The NCAA recently introduced a Division I eligibility model granting student-athletes five years to compete across five seasons. While it replaces the old system of five years to play four seasons, the model excludes athletes from the class of 2022 who finished their fourth year in spring 2026 from receiving an additional year of eligibility.

Excluding a class from a rule that should ordinarily apply to all college football athletes led to a legal battle. This move to exclude only a group of athletes, according to the attorney, was intentional and designed to incite them into a legal battle against the NCAA.

“It appears that the decision to exclude college athletes, knowing that they would likely win a TRO, was for political expediency to publicize the need for legislative action,” Rob Shelquist, a partner at Cuneo Gilbert Flannery & LaDuca, LLP, representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement to Front Office Sports.

“We are concerned that having decisively achieved a hard-won victory, the PCSA will now ignore the judge’s careful analysis and block the college athletes’ access to courts in the future.”

The age-based eligibility model was established to spare the NCAA the burden of handling thousands of eligibility requests and legal battles from student-athletes. It notes that a student-athlete’s five-year eligibility clock begins either the year they turn 19 or when they first enroll in college, whichever comes first. While the rule applies only to athletes enrolling in fall 2027 or later, current athletes with remaining eligibility and recruits enrolling in fall 2026 are free to follow whichever model suits them best.

The challenge with the model is its exclusion of the high school class of 2022. As a result, student-athletes in the class filed a lawsuit. On July 31, 2026, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte Sweeney issued a class-wide preliminary injunction. The ruling forced the NCAA to grant an immediate fifth year of eligibility to all Division I athletes from the high school class of 2022, who had already exhausted their traditional four years of eligibility.

“They will suffer irreparable harm without issuance of an injunction. And the balance of equities, as well as the public interest, favor them. They are entitled to the injunctive relief they seek,” Sweeney wrote in the decision.

As good as Shelquist’s claim about the NCAA sounds, it is almost impossible that the NCAA could accurately predict that the judge would grant the entire class an additional year of eligibility and create chaos around an uncertain decision. At this point, the NCAA seems to be accepting small losses while aiming for the big win: the PCSA.

NCAA’s response to court ruling

Despite Shelquist’s idea that the NCAA might have intentionally left out the 2022 class, the governing body fought back against the court’s ruling in a letter issued on Saturday.

“The court’s decision to certify a nationwide class and grant sweeping injunctive relief with virtually no evidence, and without witness testimony or even so much as a hearing, invites further chaos in college sports and irreparably harms thousands of student-athletes already on campus,” NCAA’s Scott Bearby wrote.

The NCAA promised to appeal the Colorado order and “will seek to restore the status quo as soon as possible.” Their aim is to ensure that member institutions apply the NCAA rules they adopted as written.