Despite the establishment of the five-for-five eligibility model as a solution to help reduce the NCAA’s legal disputes, another one has emerged. This time, it is from former Texas Longhorns offensive lineman Cole Hutson, who is seeking immediate injunctive relief for a fifth season of eligibility. Discussing the uncertainty around Hutson’s unique situation, Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian has broken his silence.

“With Cole’s situation, obviously, we’re monitoring it,” Sarkisian said to the media in a press conference at the THCSA convention on July 19. “And I don’t know where it’s going to go. And I think we’ve all seen over the past few years, there’s been a lot of lawsuits that have been filed and piggybacking off of other lawsuits, so on and so forth. And you know, Cole’s a guy with so much of experience, played a lot of football for us. And you know, he’s a guy that unfortunately didn’t get drafted. So, he puts himself in a bit of a different situation than maybe most guys that got done playing their fourth year in college.”

“So, we’ll see what that looks like, and we’ll see where it goes. I think with the five-for-five now, it’s interesting. I was just talking to Coach Trailer. He’s got the oldest team in the country, UTSA, this fall. And I think we made a conscious effort this year to try to get older from where we were a year ago. I still think we’re like, fourth or fifth youngest team in the country.”

Hutson was from the high school class of 2022, but according to the new rules, the five-for-five eligibility extends to those in the high school class of 2023 and younger. This is why Hutson filed the lawsuit at the Travis County district court.

With Hutson, it is quite a unique situation. The 6-foot-5, 308-pound offensive lineman entered the 2026 NFL draft, but unfortunately went undrafted. It becomes more complicated, seeing that he participated in a rookie minicamp invitation with the Dallas Cowboys.

He joined the Longhorns in 2022 and made 48 appearances and 23 starts in four years.

His lawsuit states that the NCAA’s rule against him “restrains his ability to further develop, restrains his ability to earn scholarship money as a student athlete in pursuit of his Master’s Degree, and restrains his ability to earn money through the use of his name, image, and likeness (NIL)”.

If given a chance to participate in his fifth year, Hutson would be adding to the Longhorns’ strength in the offensive line, as they already have players like Trevor Goosby and Brandon Baker.