Every NCAA Eligibility Rule Needs a Line. The Lawsuits Keep Coming From the Other Side of It.

Rapid Response / Legal Alert | September 18, 2026

The NCAA rewrote its eligibility system to make eligibility disputes easier to avoid.

Three months later, athletes are suing over the rewrite.

That is the tension at the center of a new lawsuit filed by Presbyterian College linebacker Malek Horlback, a fifth-year student who began college in 2022, competed in four football seasons, and now wants to play one more.

Under the NCAA’s old system, the answer was straightforward: no. Division I athletes ordinarily received four seasons of competition within a five-year window.

Under the NCAA’s new system, the answer looks different. The association eliminated the four-season cap and moved to an age-based model that generally provides an athlete with a continuous five-year eligibility period beginning at the earlier of full-time collegiate enrollment or the academic year immediately after the athlete turns 19. NCAA Bylaw 12.6 now expressly defines that five-year period.

If that were the entire rule, Horlback says he would still be inside his window.

But it is not the entire rule.

When the NCAA adopted the new model, it also created transition provisions. Athletes who still had eligibility remaining under the old rules after the 2025-26 academic year may receive whichever system is more favorable. Athletes who used their fourth and final season during 2025-26 receive “no additional eligibility.”

Horlback falls in the second group.

So on September 15, he sued.

The case is about one football player’s season. But the real issue is larger: the NCAA eliminated one bright line and immediately had to draw another.

And every bright line creates somebody standing an inch outside it.

Horlback filed his complaint in South Carolina state court in Laurens County, where Presbyterian College is located. He alleges breach of contract and a violation of the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act, and he is seeking emergency injunctive relief that would permit him to compete during the 2026 season. The complaint also seeks other relief, including attorneys’ fees.

As of publication, no court has ruled on Horlback’s request.

There is therefore no holding to analyze, no judicial finding that the NCAA violated a contract, and no determination that Horlback is eligible.

That distinction matters because eligibility litigation is moving so quickly that preliminary orders in different cases are easily flattened into a misleading narrative that “courts have ruled” the NCAA’s transition provision unlawful.

They have not—not finally, and not uniformly.

Some trial courts have temporarily sided with athletes. Others have not. Appellate courts have stayed some athlete-friendly injunctions. Several cases remain in emergency postures where courts are deciding only whether athletes may play while the underlying litigation proceeds.

Horlback enters that unsettled landscape asking a South Carolina court to act before another part of his season disappears.

The new system is often called “five-for-five.”

Even the NCAA says that shorthand is inaccurate.

The new rule does not simply guarantee every athlete five seasons of competition. It creates a continuous five-year eligibility period tied principally to age and initial enrollment, while other academic and athletics eligibility requirements continue to apply. The clock generally does not stop because an athlete redshirts, transfers, sits out, or takes time away from competition.

That simplicity was the point.

The old system required schools to track seasons of competition, redshirts, hardship waivers, delayed enrollment, sport-specific provisions, and numerous exceptions. The new model eliminates much of that machinery. NCAA President Charlie Baker specifically cited the difficulty of administering the old rules in an increasingly litigious environment when the association announced the change.

The new philosophy is essentially:

Fewer waivers. Fewer exceptions. One clock.

But changing systems created a transition problem.

Consider two athletes who both enrolled in 2022.

Athlete A competed all four years from 2022 through 2025-26.

Athlete B redshirted one season and competed only three times.

Under the NCAA’s transition framework, Athlete B still has eligibility remaining under the old system and can receive whichever eligibility model is more favorable. Athlete A exhausted the four seasons previously available and receives no new season.

Horlback is Athlete A.

His argument, stripped to its core, is that the NCAA changed the underlying premise of eligibility—abandoning the four-season limitation—while using that now-abandoned limitation to decide which current athletes may benefit from the replacement.

That is the awkwardness.

It is not necessarily the same thing as illegality.

Much of the recent NCAA eligibility litigation has been framed as antitrust litigation.

Horlback’s complaint is different.

He currently alleges breach of contract and a violation of South Carolina’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, not a violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

That pleading choice matters.

Antitrust plaintiffs challenging NCAA eligibility rules must do considerably more than show that a rule hurts them. They ordinarily must define a relevant market, establish anticompetitive effects, address any procompetitive justification offered by the NCAA, and potentially show that those objectives could be achieved through less restrictive means.

Those requirements have become important barriers in recent eligibility cases.

By contrast, Horlback’s contract theory can focus on a narrower proposition: did the NCAA bind itself through its Constitution and Bylaws to obligations benefiting student-athletes, and did this transition rule violate those obligations?

That does not make the case easy. It simply moves the fight.

Because Horlback is not himself one of the contracting NCAA member institutions, the first significant question is whether he may enforce the NCAA’s governing documents as an intended third-party beneficiary.

South Carolina law is not hostile to that concept. The South Carolina Supreme Court has recognized that a nonparty may enforce an agreement where the contracting parties intended the agreement to provide that person or class a direct benefit. In Beverly v. Grand Strand Regional Medical Center, the court emphasized substance over labels in evaluating third-party-beneficiary status.

For college athletes, there is an intuitive argument: NCAA eligibility bylaws are difficult to describe as rules that merely incidentally affect student-athletes. Their entire function is to determine when those athletes may compete.

But establishing enforceability is only step one.

Horlback still needs a breach.

And that is where the NCAA has a serious argument.

The NCAA can say that Horlback received exactly the eligibility the rules promised when he began competing: four seasons within five years. He used all four. When the NCAA later adopted a more generous system, nothing in the old agreement required the association to apply the new benefit retroactively.

Put differently:

The NCAA did not take away Horlback’s fifth season. Under the rules governing him, he never had one.

The transition provision then expressly says athletes who used their final season during 2025-26 receive no additional eligibility.

That is not merely an argument about fairness. It is a textual argument.

And another federal court accepted essentially that reasoning this week.

On September 16, U.S. District Judge David Nye denied a temporary restraining order sought by Boise State athletes making a similar challenge in Helms v. NCAA.

For purposes of the emergency motion, Judge Nye was willing to assume that the NCAA’s Constitution and Bylaws constituted a contract and that the athletes were intended third-party beneficiaries.

The problem was the alleged breach.

The athletes relied in part on broad NCAA commitments to fair competition. But Judge Nye reasoned that general fairness language was likely controlled by the more specific eligibility provisions. And he offered the line that captures the NCAA’s strongest defense to the entire transition challenge: “Wherever the NCAA decided to draw the line would have left some group unsatisfied.”

The fact that the line landed on the 2022 cohort, he wrote, appeared “unfortunate but not nefarious.”

Idaho law does not bind a South Carolina judge. Neither does Helms finally resolve even the Idaho plaintiffs’ case; Judge Nye denied the TRO but held their preliminary-injunction request in abeyance for additional briefing and an October hearing.

Still, the reasoning matters.

A court can believe the transition rule is harsh, recognize that athletes will lose meaningful opportunities, and still conclude that changing a rule prospectively does not create a contractual obligation to extend the benefit backward.

That is likely the central obstacle Horlback must overcome.

Ohio provides the counterexample.

In Borovicanin v. NCAA, a Hamilton County trial judge granted preliminary relief in July to athletes challenging the same transition problem. That court found sufficient evidence at the preliminary stage that the athletes were third-party beneficiaries and that the NCAA’s treatment of the affected cohort could constitute an arbitrary or bad-faith breach of contractual obligations.

But that story also demonstrates why preliminary eligibility rulings require caution.

Ohio’s First District Court of Appeals later stayed the injunction pending appeal, concluding that the NCAA had presented a substantial case on the merits and had demonstrated irreparable harm sufficient to support a stay. The Ohio Supreme Court is now considering an emergency request to lift that appellate stay and ordered the NCAA on September 17 to respond by September 21.

So even within the contract cases, there is no settled answer.

One trial court viewed the exclusion as potentially arbitrary and inconsistent with contractual duties.

Another looked at substantially similar facts and concluded that the NCAA simply had to place the transition line somewhere.

That disagreement is exactly why Horlback’s South Carolina lawsuit matters.

The NCAA has a legitimate administrability argument.

It says retroactively adding another season for athletes who had already exhausted their eligibility could disrupt roster planning and the settled expectations of incoming and current players. That concern is particularly concrete in the post-House environment, where schools are simultaneously managing roster limits, scholarships, revenue-sharing decisions, NIL opportunities, and recruiting.

A rule change needs an effective date.

Courts generally understand that.

Horlback’s stronger response is therefore not that any transition line is unlawful. It is that this particular line may be difficult to reconcile with the NCAA’s stated reason for replacing the old system.

The NCAA said the old regime had become too complicated and waiver-driven. It eliminated seasons-of-competition limits and replaced them with a continuous period that is supposed to be simpler, more transparent, and more predictable.

Yet for the transition year, eligibility still turns on whether an athlete happened to use four seasons under the very system the NCAA just discarded.

That creates an unusual result.

An athlete who redshirted can potentially use the new rule.

An otherwise similarly situated athlete who competed every season cannot.

The legal question is not simply whether that feels unfair. Courts do not invalidate private association rules because the line could have been drawn more generously.

The better question is whether the distinction conflicts with an enforceable contractual commitment or was applied in a manner that South Carolina law recognizes as arbitrary, unreasonable, or inconsistent with good-faith contractual performance.

That is where Horlback either has a case or does not.

Horlback also invokes the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act.

That claim may face an additional hurdle.

South Carolina does not convert every contractual dispute into a consumer-protection case. A private SCUTPA plaintiff must establish an unfair or deceptive practice in trade or commerce that adversely affects the public interest. State courts have repeatedly held that a dispute affecting only the parties is not enough. A plaintiff can establish public impact through a real potential for repetition, including where a defendant’s procedures themselves create that potential.

Horlback has at least an argument on repetition.

The transition rule is not an individualized mistake. It is an NCAA-wide policy applied to an entire class of athletes.

But repetition answers only part of the problem.

He still must show legally actionable unfair or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce. A transparent eligibility rule that expressly says certain athletes receive no additional season may be easier to attack as allegedly unfair than as deceptive. And South Carolina precedent makes clear that an ordinary breach of contract affecting private parties does not become a SCUTPA violation simply because the plaintiff calls it unfair.

For that reason, the contract claim appears to be the cleaner path to emergency relief.

Horlback does not have the luxury of ordinary litigation speed.

Football seasons expire much faster than lawsuits.

Under South Carolina law, a party seeking a temporary injunction generally must show immediate irreparable harm, likelihood of success on the merits, and no adequate remedy at law. A temporary restraining order issued without notice requires specific facts showing immediate and irreparable injury before the opposing party can be heard, and an ex parte TRO ordinarily cannot last more than ten days without extension or consent.

Horlback’s strongest factor may be irreparable harm.

Every game he misses is a game a later damages award cannot recreate. His coach has said he has drawn professional attention, and an additional college season can affect playing film, exposure, NIL opportunities, development, and a potential professional career.

Money can compensate for many things.

It cannot put September back on the calendar in December.

But irreparable harm alone does not win an injunction.

The harder question is whether Horlback can show enough likelihood of success on his contract theory to justify forcing the NCAA to treat him as eligible before that contract question is finally adjudicated.

That is where Helms, Borovicanin, and the other transition cases become consequential.

The most prominent challenge to the transition provision is Wisne v. NCAA, a federal class action in Colorado.

There, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney entered a preliminary injunction in July after concluding, on the record before her, that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their Sherman Act theory and that the NCAA’s asserted objectives could be achieved through less restrictive means.

But the Tenth Circuit later stayed that injunction pending appeal. The district court docket reflects that the stay remains in place while appellate proceedings continue.

Other federal courts have been considerably more skeptical, particularly where athletes failed to develop sufficient evidence defining the relevant labor market and demonstrating market-wide anticompetitive effects. The Idaho court this week emphasized that modern NCAA antitrust claims require actual market evidence, not merely proof that an individual athlete was harmed.

Horlback’s state-law complaint avoids that immediate antitrust burden.

That may prove significant.

If athletes can obtain essentially the same eligibility relief through contract law, the battle over NCAA eligibility could become increasingly decentralized: not one national antitrust rule, but fifty states’ laws governing contracts, consumer protection, injunctions, and voluntary associations.

For an organization built around nationally uniform eligibility rules, that may be an even more difficult problem.

Horlback’s lawsuit does not establish that the NCAA’s new eligibility rule is unlawful.

It does not establish that every 2022 athlete is entitled to another season.

It does not establish that five years of competition are now guaranteed.

And it does not establish that South Carolina contract law will follow the Ohio trial court rather than the Idaho court’s reasoning.

What it does establish is that the NCAA’s eligibility reform has not eliminated eligibility litigation. It has changed the subject of it.

The old fights often asked whether an athlete deserved an exception from the rule.

The new fight asks whether the NCAA lawfully decided who receives the benefit of the new rule in the first place.

That may ultimately be a temporary problem. Once the transition cohorts move through the system, the particular dispute over athletes who exhausted four seasons under the prior regime should largely disappear.

But the underlying lesson is more durable.

There is a tradeoff between discretion and bright lines.

Discretion creates waiver disputes: Why did that athlete receive an exception when I did not?

Bright lines create boundary disputes: Why is the line here rather than one step over?

The NCAA intentionally chose clarity over flexibility. Its own eligibility guidance describes the new system in almost exactly those terms: more predictable, but less flexible.

Horlback’s case is what that tradeoff looks like from the wrong side of the line.

The immediate fight is emergency relief.

Horlback needs a South Carolina judge to act while there is still meaningful football left to play. The NCAA, in turn, has every incentive to resist another athlete-specific injunction that further fragments application of a national eligibility rule.

If Horlback obtains a TRO or temporary injunction, that would allow him to compete while the litigation continues. It would not establish a final entitlement to a fifth season or finally resolve his contract and SCUTPA claims.

If the court denies emergency relief, the practical stakes become harsher with every passing week. A legal victory after the season cannot recreate games already lost.

And whatever the South Carolina court does, it will enter a rapidly shifting national landscape.

The Colorado class injunction has been stayed. The Ohio injunction has been stayed while the athletes seek emergency relief from the Ohio Supreme Court. An Idaho judge has rejected a TRO while scheduling fuller consideration of a preliminary injunction. Other athletes are litigating variations of the same transition question around the country.

Eventually, appellate courts may impose some order.

For now, eligibility increasingly depends not only on the NCAA rulebook, but on which courthouse an athlete walks into and which body of law follows him through the door.

That is not the simplified eligibility system the NCAA set out to create.

And it may be the most important thing about Horlback’s lawsuit.