Another Court, Another Season: Indiana Athletes Win Emergency Relief Against the NCAA

Rapid Response | September 4, 2026

The NCAA has a national eligibility system.

At least in theory.

On Friday, an Indiana state judge temporarily restored eligibility to eight college athletes, including Indiana football standouts Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt, after blocking the NCAA and Big Ten from enforcing rules that would have kept them out of competition during the 2026–27 season.

The ruling gives the athletes immediate relief while their lawsuit proceeds—and gets Daley and Wyatt back on the field just in time for Indiana’s season opener against North Texas.

More importantly, it adds another court, another group of athletes, and another exception to an NCAA eligibility system that is becoming increasingly difficult to describe as uniform.

The dispute is another consequence of the NCAA’s move toward a new five-years-to-play-five-seasons eligibility framework.

The problem is the transition.

Athletes entering under the newer system can potentially receive five seasons of competition. But many members of the high-school Class of 2022 began their college careers under the old framework and had already used four seasons before the NCAA changed course.

Earlier this summer, a federal judge in Colorado granted relief benefiting that group. Daley and Wyatt were among the athletes who appeared positioned to return for another season.

Then the Tenth Circuit stayed that ruling on August 21, once again making them ineligible.

So the athletes tried another route.

On September 4, they filed in Indiana state court. Monroe Circuit Court Judge Kara Krothe granted a temporary restraining order the same day. Her order applies not only to Daley and Wyatt, but also six other athletes across multiple sports, including Indiana volleyball player Avry Tatum.

A hearing on whether that temporary relief should become a preliminary injunction is scheduled for September 11.

Every new eligibility system needs a starting point.

And every starting point leaves somebody immediately on the wrong side of it.

That is essentially what these athletes are challenging.

They are not arguing that the NCAA can never impose eligibility limits. They are arguing that the NCAA adopted a more generous framework while excluding athletes whose careers began immediately before the change—even though those athletes made enrollment, transfer, injury, and career decisions under rules the NCAA later abandoned.

That creates a difficult question:

When an organization changes the rules, how much latitude does it have to deny the benefit of those changes to people already caught in the transition?

The NCAA has an obvious answer. Eligibility rules need administrable boundaries, and any transition provision will necessarily distinguish between groups of athletes.

The plaintiffs have an equally obvious response: a line can be easy to administer and still be unfair—or legally vulnerable—if similarly situated athletes wind up receiving dramatically different treatment based largely on timing.

That fight will ultimately require more than Friday’s emergency order to resolve.

A temporary restraining order is not a final victory.

But in college sports, temporary relief can be unusually powerful.

A football season does not wait for appellate briefing. Neither does a volleyball season.

If an athlete loses several months litigating eligibility and eventually wins, there may be no meaningful way to restore the games that disappeared in the meantime.

That is why courts repeatedly focus on irreparable harm in these cases—and why athletes continue asking judges for emergency relief.

Daley and Wyatt illustrate the point perfectly.

Both played significant roles for Indiana during its undefeated 2025 national-championship season before injuries cut their seasons short. Friday’s order means they can again participate immediately rather than wait for the lawsuit to work its way toward final judgment.

For the NCAA, however, every successful emergency injunction creates a different problem.

This is now the larger story.

The NCAA can write one eligibility rule.

But if athletes in Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Colorado, and elsewhere receive different judicial treatment, the practical rule begins to depend on where somebody files suit.

That is a serious governance problem.

The NCAA’s value as a national regulator depends in part on similarly situated athletes being governed by generally similar rules. Once eligibility becomes subject to a patchwork of temporary injunctions, that promise becomes much harder to maintain.

An athlete may be ineligible on Thursday.

Eligible on Friday.

And potentially ineligible again after the next hearing.

At that point, the rulebook is only part of the eligibility process.

The docket matters too.

Friday’s ruling does not establish that every Class of 2022 athlete is entitled to a fifth season.

It temporarily protects eight plaintiffs while the court considers the larger legal challenge.

The next meaningful date is September 11, when Judge Krothe is scheduled to consider further injunctive relief.

But even at this early stage, the broader trend is difficult to miss.

The NCAA changed its eligibility model.

Athletes who landed just outside the transition line are refusing to accept that result.

And increasingly, they are asking judges—not the NCAA—to make the final call.

College sports may still have an eligibility rulebook.

It is starting to need a case reporter too.