Rapid Response | September 3, 2026
College eligibility used to be mostly about whether an athlete could play.
That is no longer the whole story.
For Missouri defensive tackle Sterling Webb, another season of eligibility also means another season of NIL opportunities, revenue-sharing payments, exposure, and potentially professional value. And on September 2, a Missouri judge kept all of that alive.
St. Louis County Judge Ellen Ribaudo denied the NCAA’s attempt to dismiss Webb’s case and continued judicial protection allowing him to compete for Missouri during the 2026 season. The court also extended the temporary restraining order to the University of Missouri, preventing the school from effectively defeating the relief by declaring Webb ineligible itself.
The ruling comes just as No. 25 Missouri opens its season and is the latest reminder that college eligibility rules are increasingly being litigated in court rather than simply administered by the NCAA.
How We Got Here
Webb played two seasons at New Mexico State before transferring to Missouri, where he played in 2024 and 2025.
He has therefore already played four college seasons.
Ordinarily, that might have ended the discussion. But the NCAA recently adopted a new eligibility model generally allowing athletes to compete for five seasons within a five-year period.
The problem is the transition.
Webb graduated high school in 2022 and falls outside the group of athletes receiving the benefit of the NCAA’s new model. He sued in July, arguing that the NCAA should not be permitted to deny him a fifth season while providing that opportunity to athletes entering college under the new framework.
Judge Ribaudo initially granted Webb temporary relief. On Wednesday, she rejected the NCAA’s effort to end the case and kept that protection in place.
For Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, the result illustrated the strange new reality of college roster management. After learning about the ruling during an SEC coaches teleconference, Drinkwitz joked that while reporters wait for injury reports, coaches now wait for judicial rulings to find out who can play.
“What a system we have,” he said.
He has a point.
Why This Case Matters
Webb’s case is part of a larger wave of litigation attacking NCAA eligibility restrictions.
But there is an important wrinkle here.
An extra year of eligibility now has a readily identifiable economic value.
Webb’s request for relief against Missouri expressly addressed not only his ability to practice and compete, but also the revenue-sharing and NIL compensation tied to his participation.
That matters because courts considering temporary injunctions traditionally ask whether a plaintiff faces harm that cannot adequately be repaired later with money.
In the old college-sports model, an athlete could argue that losing a season was inherently irreparable because the opportunity to compete could never be recreated.
That argument has not disappeared.
But today, the lost season can carry something more: lost revenue sharing, NIL income, exposure, development, and perhaps draft position or professional earning potential.
In other words, eligibility is no longer simply a regulatory status.
It can be an economic asset.
The Bigger Problem for the NCAA
The NCAA’s challenge is not merely defending Webb’s particular case.
It is maintaining a national eligibility system while athletes increasingly persuade courts around the country to grant individualized exceptions.
Every successful injunction creates another incentive for the next athlete to sue.
And because college sports seasons operate on unforgiving calendars, temporary relief can sometimes become practically decisive. By the time a case reaches a final judgment or appellate court, the athlete may already have played the season in dispute.
That creates a difficult dynamic for the NCAA: even without losing on the ultimate merits, it can lose control of the rule in the meantime.
Webb’s case also exposes the difficulty of transitioning between eligibility systems. Whenever the NCAA draws a line between athletes covered by an old rule and athletes benefiting from a new one, someone inevitably lands one day—or one graduating class—on the wrong side of it.
The legal question becomes whether that line is merely imperfect or actually unlawful.
What to Watch
Webb’s temporary victory is not a final ruling that the NCAA’s new eligibility structure is invalid.
But the case is worth watching because it sits at the intersection of several forces reshaping college sports at once: changing NCAA rules, judicial skepticism of NCAA restrictions, direct athlete compensation, NIL, and increasingly aggressive athlete litigation.
And the practical consequences are already obvious.
Missouri opens its season with Webb eligible to play because a judge said so.
That may sound unusual.
Increasingly, it is starting to sound like college sports.
The Game Behind The Game provides commentary and analysis for informational purposes only. Nothing published here constitutes legal advice, creates an attorney-client relationship, or should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from qualified counsel regarding a particular matter.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s law firm, its attorneys, or its clients.