US LBM Coaches Poll: Indiana Hoosiers finish season in 1st place
The latest U.S. LBM Coaches Poll has arrived, and Blake Topmeyer breaks down all the stories.
- Joey Aguilar has sued the NCAA. After four seasons at junior college, he hopes to spend four seasons in the NCAA.
- If Aguilar wins his lawsuit, he will be at the forefront of Tennessee’s quarterback battle.
- The NIL and transfer portal aren’t the biggest threats to college sports. The real problem is the NCAA’s inability to enforce eligibility rules.
A college football quarterback is suing the NCAA, saying NCAA rules don’t allow him to be an eighth-year senior quarterback.
Yes, you read that correctly. Joey Aguilar wants to play as an eighth-grade senior.
He will celebrate his 25th birthday in June. In three months, he hopes to be Tennessee’s starting quarterback. Because being a college quarterback and earning a $2 million salary must sound like a lot better than dropping out of college and getting a job in the real world.
But Aguilar encountered disaster. The mean old NCAA doesn’t want him pursuing his dream of being an 8th year senior QB.
So Aguilar honored the modern rite of passage for college athletes. He hired a lawyer.
Now, a judge in Knoxville, Tennessee, will have influence in determining the Vols’ starting quarterback for the 2026 season.
I think we officially jumped the shark when athletes sued the NCAA for not being allowed to play eight collegiate seasons, and when local judges ended up shaping the quarterback competition for their alma maters.
The NCAA has a serious problem, folks, and it’s not the NIL.
NIL is the scapegoat. That’s not the main problem in college sports. The big problem isn’t even the transfer portal.
The real threat to the NCAA, revealed once again by Aguilar’s lawsuit, is the association’s continued fight to enforce eligibility rules.
The biggest problem is the NCAA’s inability to enforce eligibility rules.
The NCAA spent years lobbying D.C. lawmakers in hopes of enacting a self-serving NIL bill. These lobbying efforts paid off. Federal lawmakers are crafting different versions of partisan NIL legislation, but it never makes it out of the chute.
What a waste of time and money!
Rather than focus on NIL relief, which will never materialize, the NCAA would have been wise to lobby for narrowly tailored, bipartisan legislation that would allow enforcement of eligibility rules.
Meanwhile, the NCAA faces an onslaught of eligibility lawsuits from local judges who favor home teams.
An Alabama judge, who is listed as a donor to the Crimson Tide’s athletics organization, has issued a preliminary ruling allowing professional basketball player Charles Bediako to sue the Tide.
In a Mississippi court, Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is suing the NCAA for six years of eligibility due to a medical redshirt.
In federal court, former Vanderbilt University quarterback Diego Pavia is suing the NCAA on similar grounds to Aguilar’s lawsuit, seeking an extension of his NCAA eligibility for junior college transfers.
It’s not like the NCAA doesn’t have rules. There are hundreds of pages of regulations, which member universities have agreed to. These rules cannot be effectively enforced.
Every time a rule negatively impacts a particular university or player, someone calls 1-800-LAWSUIT. Then, after the NCAA had its teeth broken multiple times, member institutions lamented the lack of guardrails.
When someone in the College Sports Inc. ecosystem says they want guardrails, what they really mean is: We want enough guardrails to prevent us from doing what we want to do. We need guardrails to hold our competitors in place, but they don’t apply to us.
Why Joey Aguilar wants to be an eighth-year senior QB
In this case, NCAA rules say a player like Aguilar cannot play Division I baseball for another four years after spending four years at a junior college. Under NCAA rules, athletes have five years to play four full seasons, even if part of that season is played at a junior college.
Aguilar’s legal team says that’s a mistake.
Aguilar’s court filing argues that his time in junior college should not count towards his chance to play four seasons in the NCAA.
To review, Aguilar began his college football career in 2019, redshirting one year at City College of San Francisco.
He then spent three years at Diablo Valley College. He played two seasons there before one season was canceled due to the coronavirus.
He then played two seasons at Appalachian State University.
He then spent a few months at UCLA last spring, but fell down the standings after UCLA nabbed Nico Iamareaba from the University of Tennessee.
So Aguilar transferred again and played last season at Tennessee, where he led the SEC in passing yards per game.
Now, he wants eight collegiate seasons, but onerous NCAA rules won’t allow it. Aguilar’s court complaint says the NCAA is “depriving (him) of millions of dollars” that he could have earned in NIL compensation in 2026.
In other words, if NCAA rules were enforceable, redshirt freshman George McIntyre would be allowed to start at Tennessee instead of sitting behind the eighth-year senior.
Depending on how Aguilar’s case goes, perhaps McIntyre should exercise his rite of passage and get a lawyer. counterclaim!
Remember that old NCAA commercial where the narrator said that most athletes would go pro in something other than sports?
A modern version of that commercial would look like this: If NCAA athletes hire the right lawyer and get a favorable judge, they can earn millions of dollars, compete forever, and then retire without ever going professional outside of college sports.
Hey son, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Retired college quarterback.
Blake Topmeyer is USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow at X @btoppmeyer.
