Trinidad Chambliss ruling just the tip of the iceberg in NCAA's eligibility crisis

For years now, I’ve searched for a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to those unfamiliar.

How do you best help people understand the instability of a structure and system so profitable and popular?

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“Everything seems to be going well. What’s all the hubbub about?” they’ll say.

Perhaps they are right. Perhaps the cries of chaos from stakeholders are only necessary growing pains for an entity evolving from amateur to professional.

Perhaps that’s OK.

But on Thursday afternoon, for a few fleeting moments, a realtime snapshot existed that, more than anything, highlights the absurd state of the industry.

Within a county courthouse, situated in the tiniest of towns in the most rural of areas in north Mississippi, a 23-year-old quarterback’s collegiate eligibility — his Heisman Trophy hopes, his team’s championship aspirations, his more than $5 million in promised compensation — hinged on a decision from a 70-plus-year-old chancery court judge who just so happens to hold a law degree from the school, Ole Miss, that stands to benefit most from his ruling.

This is less than ideal.

Set aside your feelings on the decision from Judge Robert Q. Whitwell to grant quarterback Trinidad Chambliss an extra year of eligibility. Remove the names and school logos. Put away your inherent bias and partiality. Look at the whole.

Is it healthy for college sports to have the eligibility of athletes determined within courtrooms across America?

In fact, as Whitwell, his Southern accent thick enough to peel paint, completed the 90-minute reading of his order and subsequent decision, the judge grew emotional, unable to keep within the joyous feelings of being the man who permitted Chambliss — by all accounts a standup human being and brilliant footballer — another year of collegiate eligibility, another chance to chase dreams, to earn millions.

It was a scene ripped from the pages of a novel from famed Mississippi-reared author John Grisham.

Trinidad Chambliss will be back in uniform for the Ole Miss Rebels next season after Thursday's eligibility ruling. (Photo by CFP/Getty Images)CFP via Getty Images

It’s easy to argue that this is one of the most compelling stories in recent college football history: a Michigan-born kid so lightly recruited that he began his career in Division II, did well enough there (Ferris State) to earn a spot playing major college football in the South as a backup, before replacing the starter midseason and leading the Ole Miss Rebels to their best season in more than 60 years.

The latest chapter came Thursday, within that courtroom as part of a lawsuit against an organization, the NCAA, that denied Chambliss three different times in the last two months an additional year of eligibility — all over claims that illness (lingering tonsillitis, plus mononucleosis and COVID) kept him from playing in 2022.

Let’s not get bogged down on the facts of the case. Here’s the gist: Over a five-hour hearing Thursday, Chambliss and his attorneys argued before the judge that he was sick enough to warrant a medical redshirt for that season; the NCAA argued he did not produce enough medical evidence to back up that claim; the judge sided with the quarterback.

There is something more important here.

This case was different from many other judicial decisions deeming the NCAA in violation of antitrust law. This was not an “antitrust” case. It was a “contract” case.

In fact, this case may have cracked a door to a new avenue of legal challenges against the NCAA’s rules. Chambliss’ attorneys, instead of suing over antitrust claims (more difficult to prove), sued the NCAA over breaching its contract with Ole Miss as a member university of which all athletes, including Chambliss, are third-party beneficiaries.

In layman’s terms, the NCAA “failed,” as the judge said, to uphold its membership agreement with Ole Miss, which states that it must “commit to the well-being and development of student-athletes” and apply its rules in “good faith.”

By not granting Chambliss a sixth year of eligibility, the NCAA breached its contract and acted in bad faith, causing harm to Chambliss in a number of ways in which the judge detailed, including the loss of compensation in what he described as the new “labor market” of college sports; loss of an additional year to develop for the NFL (something that Ole Miss assistant coach Joe Judge, a witness in the case, stressed during his time on the stand); and, in an interesting twist, the loss of college football’s fan base in witnessing one of the best players in the country, the judge said.

As in many of these cases, the NCAA is made to be the bad guy here. Evil. Sinister.

But there is something important to remember: The NCAA is charged with enforcing rules and standards that are created by member schools. As it turns out, a committee of school administrators — not the NCAA staff — denied Chambliss’ waiver appeal.

The root of the denial has gone mostly unreported, but here it is: Committee members requested to see practice logs from Chambliss’ 2022 season as a way to determine the severity of his illness. However, since 2022, Ferris State has switched operation systems that archive practice logs. The records were lost or were so difficult and costly enough to obtain that they never made it to the committee.

The NCAA staff’s original denial of Chambliss’ eligibility waiver in December preceded the denied appeal from the committee in early January and triggered the lawsuit to be filed soon afterward. And then, on the morning of Thursday’s hearing, Chambliss’ last resort for eligibility through the NCAA — a “reconsideration” — was rejected.

It mattered not, of course.

Within a courtroom, from a local judge, another college athlete received additional eligibility.

Since Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia successfully sued the NCAA in December of 2024, Chambliss is the 11th player to receive an injunction for extended eligibility in 55 lawsuits filed. In 34 of those cases a judge ruled in favor of the NCAA in a preliminary judgement, or the case was voluntarily dismissed.

About a dozen cases are still pending, including one coming Friday, when Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar and attorneys plan to argue for an eighth year of eligibility before, yes, a Tennessee judge.

Of the 11 successful injunctions granted to extend a player’s eligibility, seven of them have come in state court from a local judge — a new way that attorneys have found to reach a decision that most benefits their clients, moving away from filing federally.

On Thursday, Chambliss’ counsel paved the way, perhaps, for another avenue to test and eventually topple NCAA standards.

In its statement in reaction to the news, the NCAA says the decision illustrates the “impossible situation” created from differing court decisions in lawsuits supported by its member schools attacking the very rules that they created. These “conflicting court decisions,” the statement read, make “partnering with Congress essential to provide stability” — another plea to lawmakers to adopt federal legislation to govern the industry.

At the very least, all of this has provided something personally useful: I’ve found a simple way to explain the current state of college athletics to those unfamiliar.

A courthouse. Congress. And an infinity of billable hours.

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