For most people, college lasts for four years. Yes, you can graduate early or take graduate classes. If college is usually four years, then how do we have college athletes in their ninth year? How do we have college athletes that were NBA draft picks? The NCAA eligibility system is a mess. There are no clearcut, defined rules. This urgently needs to change.
Injury years, COVID years and redshirt years all compound to create such an extensive college career.. COVID years are no longer in effect and redshirt years have strict guidelines. What’s missing rules, and therefore a complete mess, are injury years.
A player can apply for an injury year if they have a “serious or season ending injury in the first half of the season.” Technically, a football player can get injured during the sixth game of the season, not return, and get the entire year back for free. If this happens two years in a row, you lose one season and get two back. Something about that doesn’t add up quite right.
The rules for an injury year are very vague and subjective. What constitutes a “serious” injury? Sometimes a player gets approved, sometimes they get denied. This process is so seemingly random that Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is suing the NCAA for denying his sixth year of eligibility. The trial is scheduled to take place Feb. 12.
As harmless as the injury year seems, I think it should be removed. Getting injured is a risk that you take by playing a sport. If you happen to suffer a season-ending injury in the first game of your senior year, then that’s really unfortunate. In high school, you don’t get an extra year if you get injured, so why should this be granted in college?
Recently, there’s been another controversy involving eligibility: NBA draft picks coming back to college. In college basketball, you can be drafted as a freshman, leaving them with three years of eligibility. This doesn’t seem like too much of an issue, but if it becomes normalized, it could open a can of worms that could ruin the sport. If there’s no risk about not being NBA ready yet, every half-decent player will enter the draft if they can come back.
While NBA draft picks are allowed to play, Kansas State women’s basketball player Tess Heal signed a deal with an Australian summer league and was suspended for three games. Surely, if we’re going to let NBA players play college basketball then playing in a summer league is valid too.
Eligibility as a whole is a mess. It’s basically a coin flip to see whether or not the NCAA will let a player compete or grant them an extra year. What side the NCAA picks doesn’t really matter, as long as they choose something and stick by it — no exceptions.
