By Steven Sheetz, PHD

College athletics is once again at a crossroads.

On June 23, 2026, the NCAA's Division I Cabinet unanimously approved a new age-based eligibility model commonly referred to as the “Five-in-Five” rule. Under this framework, Division I student-athletes will have five years of competition eligibility, and the traditional redshirt system will largely disappear. An athlete's eligibility clock will begin upon full-time enrollment or the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever occurs first. The rules are set to take effect this fall.

The NCAA hopes the change will simplify a system that has become increasingly difficult to manage. Over the last several years, medical hardship waivers, COVID exemptions, transfer exceptions, and legal challenges have created a landscape where some athletes compete well into their mid-twenties while others are denied additional eligibility. The Five-in-Five model is intended to create clarity and consistency. NCAA President Charlie Baker has described the goal as a much simpler eligibility process, and the change all but eliminates extensions for injured athletes, preserving only narrow exceptions for religious missions, maternity leave, and active-duty military service.

Yet the rule may face the same obstacle that has shaped nearly every major NCAA reform over the past decade: the courts. The legal picture, however, is more complicated than it first appears.

The NCAA's Legal Reality

The NCAA once operated as the unquestioned governing authority of college sports. That authority has steadily eroded through a series of court decisions. Beginning with O'Bannon v. NCAA, continuing through NCAA v. Alston, and culminating in the House settlement, courts have repeatedly found that NCAA restrictions on athlete compensation and participation may violate antitrust law. The result has been a gradual transfer of power away from the NCAA and toward athletes, institutions, conferences, and the marketplace.

That narrative, though, deserves an important qualification. On eligibility specifically, the NCAA has recently been winning. In April 2026, the Ninth Circuit tossed a lower court's injunction and upheld the NCAA's five-year eligibility limit, ending the challenging athlete's college career. The association has, in fact, largely succeeded in defending its eligibility rules in court even as it has lost ground on compensation. The Five-in-Five rule arrives, then, not from a position of pure weakness but from a calculated bet that a cleaner, brighter-line rule will prove easier to defend than the patchwork it replaces.

The rule was designed, in part, to reduce the number of eligibility lawsuits. Ironically, it may generate new ones. Sports attorney Mit Winter has called the model a sensible rule that offers a more black-and-white evaluation of eligibility, a welcome change for schools navigating a case-by-case waiver process. But he cautions that because athletes are still not considered employees and have no collective bargaining mechanism to set agreed-upon standards, legal challenges remain likely. As Winter put it, the rule still limits how long someone can work, and be paid, as a college athlete.

Sam Ehrlich, a Boise State professor who tracks NCAA litigation, is blunter about the rule's preventive ambitions, noting that he would not expect the change itself to slow lawsuits down. Already, attorneys representing athletes have suggested that aspects of the rule could be challenged, particularly its non-retroactive application. Athletes whose eligibility recently expired may argue they are being unfairly excluded from benefits provided to future athletes. If courts agree, the NCAA could once again be forced to modify its rules after implementation.

What If the Rule Does Not Survive?

If the Five-in-Five model is struck down or significantly altered through litigation, the consequences would extend far beyond eligibility. Institutions would face continued uncertainty regarding roster management and recruiting, leaving coaches to forecast scholarship availability, roster turnover, and player development timelines against a moving target. Athletes, meanwhile, would continue operating under a patchwork system of waivers and legal exceptions. Rather than creating predictability, eligibility decisions would increasingly depend on individual legal challenges, advantaging those with the resources to pursue them.

There is also a compounding effect. Every successful lawsuit further weakens the NCAA's ability to establish universally accepted rules, and each judicial intervention sends a message that NCAA regulations are perpetually subject to challenge under antitrust principles. At some point the question becomes larger than eligibility: Can the NCAA still function as the primary governing body of college athletics?

The non-retroactive design sharpens this risk. The model does not apply to student-athletes whose eligibility is or will be completed by spring 2026, and the Cabinet has set July 31 as the deadline for current athletes to submit hardship-waiver requests, after which such waivers disappear entirely. That hard cutoff is precisely the kind of bright line that invites “I missed it by weeks” litigation from athletes left on the wrong side of the date.

The Emerging Power Structure

The House settlement may provide the clearest glimpse into the future. It permits participating schools to directly share revenue with athletes while imposing roster limits and creating new enforcement mechanisms. Notably, many of these enforcement responsibilities are being shifted away from the NCAA itself and toward newly created oversight organizations and conference-led structures.

In effect, college athletics is becoming increasingly decentralized. The power conferences now possess greater financial resources, greater legal influence, and greater control over the future direction of college sports than at any point in NCAA history. If current trends continue, the NCAA may evolve from a governing body into an administrative organization that manages championships while conferences establish many of the rules that truly matter. This would mirror professional sports models, where leagues and conferences, not a national governing association, control competition rules, compensation structures, and enforcement.

The End of Amateurism?

The broader challenge facing the NCAA is philosophical. For decades, its governance was built around the concept of amateurism, and courts have increasingly rejected amateurism as sufficient justification for limiting athlete opportunities or compensation. Revenue sharing, NIL opportunities, unrestricted transfers, and expanded eligibility all point toward a system that more closely resembles professional sports than traditional collegiate athletics.

The blurring runs in both directions. Under the new framework, athletes may even opt into a professional league draft once without losing college eligibility, provided they withdraw by the applicable deadline. A door that once swung only one way now swings both, further eroding the bright line between amateur and professional that the NCAA spent decades defending. The association finds itself in the difficult position of trying to preserve educational values while operating in a marketplace worth billions of dollars annually. The Five-in-Five rule is therefore more than an eligibility adjustment. It represents another attempt by the NCAA to adapt to a rapidly changing legal and economic environment.

The Road Ahead

Whether the Five-in-Five rule survives future legal scrutiny remains uncertain, and live cases offer a preview of the fights to come. Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, the Heisman Trophy runner-up, remains the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging an NCAA rule that counts junior-college seasons against Division I eligibility, with trial slated for February. Cases like his are a reminder that the courtroom, not the Cabinet, may have the final word.

What appears increasingly certain is that college athletics is moving toward a new governance model. The central question is no longer whether the NCAA will change; that process is already underway. The real question is whether the NCAA can successfully reinvent itself before the courts, conferences, and market forces effectively redefine college sports without it. The Five-in-Five rule may ultimately be remembered less for changing eligibility and more for revealing the NCAA's ongoing struggle to remain relevant in a system it once completely controlled.

References

Anderson, R. (2026, June 23). NCAA approves five-year eligibility rule for college athletes. Eleven Warriors. https://www.elevenwarriors.com/college-sports/2026/06/162838/ncaa-approves-five-year-eligibility-rule-for-college-athletes

Associated Press. (2026, June 23). NCAA panel approves new eligibility rules giving Division I athletes 5 years to play 5 seasons. NBC Sports. https://www.nbcsports.com/college-football/news/ncaa-panel-approves-new-eligibility-rules-giving-division-i-athletes-5-years-to-play-5-seasons

CBS Sports staff. (2026, June 23). NCAA votes to approve age-based five-year eligibility rule, reshaping college football, basketball landscapes. CBS Sports. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ncaa-five-year-eligibility-rule-college-football-basketball/

Fisher Phillips LLP. (2026, May 5). NCAA eligibility updates: What athletic departments must know about recent gains in court and new “Five-for-Five” proposal. https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/what-athletic-departments-must-know-about-recent-gains-in-court-and-new-five-for-five-proposal

row2k. (2026, May). NCAA considers ‘5-in-5’ rule that would create age-based eligibility model. https://www.row2k.com/features/6778/ncaa-considers-5in5-rule-that-would-create-agebased-eligibility-model/

Wingert Grebing Brubaker & Walshok LLP. (2026, May 1). NCAA eligibility extension: 5-year rule explained (2026 update). https://wingertlaw.com/2026/05/01/ncaa-eligibility-extension/