MARLER: NCAA 5-Year eligibility rule would bring needed clarity

By Chris Marler

College sports fans agreeing on something, and the NCAA doing something right.

I’ll take “Things that are impossible to find” for $500, Alex.

Both those things asre as unlikely as a Group of Five school winning a national title, or getting southerners to say “pop” instead of “Coke.” 

The NCAA has several decades worth of ill will built up against them thanks to their own idiocy and bad decisions. Trusting them with that track record feels like trusting a freshman with a credit card on spring break. 

Little by little though, the NCAA has started to take baby steps towards changing the long, and deserved, negative narrative that they are the enemy when it comes to college sports. 

Next week, the NCAA Division I Cabinet is set to meet on potential changes to the landscape of the sports they govern. Most notably are proposals regarding eligibility rules. Members of the cabinet will reportedly discuss implementing a new rule granting five years of eligibility and no more. The five year window would begin after high school graduation or once a student-athlete turns 19. 

Five years. That’s it. No more redshirts. No more waivers. No more inconsistent chaos. 

The NCAA is exploring a significant change to its eligibility rule, per Yahoo Sports’ @RossDellenger.

Next week, an NCAA committee will discuss a new age-based standard for athlete eligibility that would grant athletes five full years of eligibility from the time of their 19th… pic.twitter.com/PuxgKQnaEh

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) April 8, 2026

Lost in the murky infancy of NIL and the transfer portal was the growing issue of expanded eligibility parameters that have loosened since COVID. Watching people in their late 20s compete against 17- and 18-year-olds in sports used to be reserved for pickup basketball at the YMCA, badly written and choreographed shows based around high school on the CW, and whatever cheerleading league Bill Belichick’s girlfriend was competing in last fall. 

Thanks to COVID, the portal, and common sense taking a backseat to almost any new rule change – that changed.

The average age of college football players shifted with teams filling their rosters with players between 22 to 26 and no longer prioritizing high school recruiting. There were 25-year-old quarterbacks starting at Power Four schools, 23-year-old freshmen from professional European basketball leagues starting in the NCAA Tournament, and even a Miami tight end who was in his ninth year of eligibility in 2024. 

9-yard TD by 9th year senior. Yes, 9th year. Enrolled at Oregon in January 2016. pic.twitter.com/7Ocj7hGCIz

— Jim Nagy (@JimNagy_Sooners) August 31, 2024

Age isn’t the issue. The lack of uniformity, however, is. 

I don’t like the NFL. I never have. One thing they have done better than college sports is commit themselves to uniform rules across the board. Everyone is operating under the same rules, and more importantly, everyone understands the rules and guardrails that they are supposed to be operating within. 

That’s not even close to being the case in college sports. Rules differ from conference to conference, state to state, and sometimes team to team regardless of which state, conference, or division that they are in. While it’s impossible to make everyone happy, this is a great start at getting back to at least laying out parameters that everyone has to abide by. There would be some exceptions like military service, religious missions, and maternity leave. Outside of that, the rules are the rules. 

Everyone might not agree that this is a positive thing. That might not even matters at this point. What college sports need are less opinions, loopholes, and self-centered fluidity when it comes to the rules. 

What it does need is the last word of that sentence – rules.

That’s a start in the right direction.