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The athletes who graduated from high school in the class of 2022 just received big news. A court judge from Colorado just ruled that, starting with the new NCAA’s five-for-five rule, the class of 2022 can now return to college for their fifth year of eligibility.
Why should five-for-five rule apply to High School Graduating class of 2022?
For starters, the NCAA made the right call in changing the eligibility rules for student-athletes. It will simply be that the player will have five years to complete five seasons with no exceptions or redshirts.
Gone is the old 4-for-5 rule, which meant each player had to play four years before pursuing a fifth year of eligibility. The 5-for-5 is an age-based model in which the clock starts when the player turns 19 and ends at 24 years of age.
This means there will no longer be players still playing college sports at 27 or 28 years old. This rule change, though, didn’t come without lawsuits from the recent college graduating class who graduated high school in 2022.
Why did Class of 2022 sue NCAA?
Because the Class of 2022 was the only class since COVID that never received an extra year by the NCAA, the court ruled that the new 5-for-5 model meant that they had to consider the Class of 2022 to earn their fifth year to graduate in the spring of 2027. While the Class of 2022 can rejoice, athletic coaches and programs have to scramble to add these athletes to their rosters.
Part of the problem, though, is that most of the prominent players from the Class of 2022 had already left for the pros before they even knew this ruling would give them an extra year of college. Therefore, it might be too little, too late for these athletes to even return to college and complete their extra year.
Why didn’t they rule this sooner?
The NCAA, for years, has been an incompetent organization with woeful ignorance of how to enforce certain laws, and biased court judges make unfavorable rulings. This ruling is actually a positive one because it shows the NCAA finally had the guts to change the eligibility rules after years of the same failed rules not working.
Plus, it involved an unbiased judge who basically told the NCAA that it needed to enforce its rules starting now, including athletes from the high school class of 2022.
What lessons can we take from this moving forward?
While these rulings temporarily fix a problem the NCAA refused to take care of for the past half-decade or so, it’s still going to take time to get used to, as now the NCAA begins transitioning into an era where there are no more traditional redshirts, medical redshirts for injury, and no more fifth-year seniors.
Also, the feeling of what the NCAA has gotten wrong in the past still stings for these athletes, but at least they are all starting to help leave that era behind. Hopefully, the ruling begins creating a more positive era and future for the athletes from the high school Class of 2022 and the athletes of the graduating classes to come, following the 5-for-5 era.
For all those Buffalo Bills fans out there, if the NCAA enforced this rule sooner, then the Bills draft class would be without edge rusher TJ Parker, cornerback Davison Igbunosun, wide receiver Skyler Bell, and so on.
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