Joey Aguilar has sued the NCAA. After four seasons in junior college, he wants a fourth season in the NCAA.
If Aguilar wins lawsuit, he’d move to the front of Tennessee’s quarterback competition.
NIL and transfer portal aren’t top threats to college sports. NCAA’s inability to enforce eligibility rules is the real issue.
A college football quarterback is suing the NCAA because the association’s rules won’t allow him to be an eighth-year senior quarterback.
Yes, you read that correctly: Joey Aguilar wants to play as an eighth-year senior.
He’ll celebrate his 25th birthday in June. Three months later, he’d like to start as Tennessee’s quarterback. Because, hey, getting paid $2 million to be a college quarterback must sound a whole heck of a lot better than leaving college and getting a job in the real world.
Aguilar, though, encountered a snafu. The mean, old NCAA doesn’t want to let him pursue his dream of being an eighth-year senior quarterback.
So, Aguilar honored a modern rite of passage for college athletes. He lawyered up.
Now, a judge in Knoxville, Tennessee, will have an influential voice in determining the Vols’ starting quarterback for the 2026 season.
When an athlete sues the NCAA because it won’t allow him to embark upon an eighth college season, and when a local judge gets to shape his alma mater’s quarterback competition, I think we’ve officially jumped the shark.
The NCAA has a growing problem, folks, and it’s not NIL.
NIL is a scapegoat. It’s not the major issue within college sports. The big problem isn’t even the transfer portal.
The real threat to the NCAA, on display again in Aguilar’s lawsuit, is the association’s constant struggle to enforce its eligibility rules.
NCAA’s inability to enforce eligibility rules a top issue
The NCAA spent years groveling to D.C. lawmakers in hopes of achieving some self-serving NIL legislation. Those lobbying efforts achieved bupkis. Federal lawmakers drum up various versions of partisan NIL legislation, but it never leaves the chute.
What a waste of time and money.
Instead of focusing on an NIL bailout that never materializes, the NCAA would’ve been smarter to lobby for narrowly tailored, bipartisan legislation allowing it to enforce its eligibility rules.
In the meantime, the NCAA faces an onslaught of eligibility lawsuits, heard by local judges who support the home team.
An Alabama judge who’s listed as a Crimson Tide athletics donor awarded a temporary ruling allowing professional basketball player Charles Bediako to suit up for the Tide.
In Mississippi court, Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is suing the NCAA in pursuit of a sixth year of eligibility on medical redshirt grounds.
In federal court, former Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia is suing the NCAA on grounds similar to Aguilar’s case, seeking to gain a longer NCAA eligibility runway for junior college transfers.
It’s not that the NCAA lacks rules. It’s got hundreds of pages of rules, to which its member universities agree. It just cannot effectively enforce those rules.
Whenever a rule negatively affects a particular university or an athlete, someone dials 1-800-LAWSUIT. Then, after the NCAA gets its teeth knocked out for the umpteenth time, member institutions bemoan the lack of guardrails.
When someone within the College Sports Inc. ecosystem says they want guardrails, here’s what they really mean: We want guardrails up to the point that they prevent us from doing what we want. We want guardrails that pin down our competition but don’t apply to us.
Why Joey Aguilar wants to be an eighth-year senior QB
In this case, NCAA rules say an athlete like Aguilar cannot spend four years in junior college and then four more playing Division I ball. An athlete gets five years to play four full seasons, per NCAA rules, even if some of those seasons occur in junior college.
To which, Aguilar’s legal team says — and, I’m paraphrasing here — that’s bunk.
Aguilar’s court filing argues his years in junior college should not count against his opportunity to play four NCAA seasons.
To review, Aguilar began his college football career in 2019, redshirting for one year at City College of San Francisco.
Then, he spent three years at Diablo Valley College. One season got canceled by COVID, before he played two seasons there.
Then, he played two seasons at Appalachian State.
Then, he spent a few months at UCLA last spring, but he got bumped down the depth chart after UCLA’s plunder of Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava.
So, Aguilar transferred again and played last season at Tennessee, where he led the SEC in passing yards per game.
Now, he wants an eighth college season, but those pesky NCAA rules won’t allow it. The NCAA, according to Aguilar’s court complaint, is “robbing (him) of millions” that he could earn in NIL compensation in 2026.
Put differently, NCAA rules, if enforceable, would allow redshirt freshman George MacIntyre to get first crack at starting for Tennessee instead of sitting behind an eighth-year senior.
Depending on how Aguilar’s lawsuit goes, perhaps MacIntyre should exercise his rite of passage and lawyer up. Countersuit!
Remember that old NCAA commercial in which the narrator said most athletes will go professional in something other than sports?
The modern version of that commercial would go something like this: NCAA athletes can earn millions, compete in perpetuity if they hire the right lawyer and score a favorable judge, and then retire without ever going pro in anything other than college sports.
Hey, son, what do you want to be when you grow up?
A retired college quarterback.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
