The NCAA Eligibility Fight Is Becoming a Contract Fight

Rapid Response / Legal Alert | September 16, 2026

There is no shortage of college athletes suing the NCAA for another season.

The more interesting question is what they are suing over.

Utah Tech volleyball players Casidy Fried and Kennedi Knudsen are the latest athletes seeking a fifth season of competition. Their lawsuit, publicly reported September 16, includes a breach-of-contract theory against the NCAA.

That matters because much of the modern eligibility fight has been framed as an antitrust problem: NCAA rules allegedly restrain competition for athletes' services and prevent players from participating in a market where another year can mean scholarship money, NIL income and direct institutional compensation.

Contract law attacks the problem from another direction.

Instead of asking whether an eligibility rule illegally restrains a market, the argument becomes:

Did the NCAA promise to administer eligibility according to its own rules—and then fail to do it?

That distinction could become increasingly important.

Both athletes began college in 2022, but their careers crossed the junior-college and NCAA systems.

Knudsen played at Utah State Eastern before becoming a Utah Tech sophomore in 2023 and ultimately a senior in 2025. Fried competed at Utah State Eastern in 2022 and 2023 before playing the 2024 and 2025 seasons at Utah Tech. Fried earned first-team All-WAC honors last season; Knudsen was second-team All-WAC and finished her Utah Tech career as the program's all-time kills leader.

Both therefore used four seasons of competition by the end of 2025.

Then the NCAA changed the rules.

In June, Division I adopted its new age-based eligibility model. Under that framework, the NCAA eliminated the traditional four-seasons-of-competition limit and instead generally provides a continuous five-year eligibility period beginning with either initial full-time college enrollment—including enrollment at a two-year college—or an age-based trigger.

But there is an important catch.

The NCAA's transition rules expressly say that athletes who used their final season under the old rules during 2025-26 receive no additional eligibility. Athletes who still had eligibility remaining after 2025-26 can receive whichever framework is more favorable.

That transition line is driving much of the current litigation.

And the NCAA itself cautions that calling the new framework “Five-for-Five” is technically inaccurate: the rule does not guarantee five seasons to every athlete.

This is the key distinction.

Fried and Knudsen are not the first athletes to invoke contract law against NCAA eligibility decisions.

Villanova quarterback Patrick McQuaide obtained preliminary relief in Ohio this summer in a case involving, among other things, a breach-of-contract theory. The Rhode Island Superior Court later described that ruling as resting substantially on the conclusion that the NCAA's administration of its eligibility rules could violate contractual duties of fair dealing.

That case is especially relevant here because McQuaide's disputed season was also a junior-college season.

Jake Picard likewise initially challenged an NCAA eligibility decision through a contract theory, arguing that he was a third-party beneficiary of NCAA bylaws. His subsequent Rhode Island litigation focused its emergency-relief request on antitrust, where the court denied his TRO because he failed to show that one waiver denial produced the marketwide anticompetitive effect required under the rule of reason.

And the expanding Daley litigation over the Class of 2022 expressly alleges that athletes are intended third-party beneficiaries of contracts between the NCAA and its members and asserts breach-of-contract and good-faith claims.

Put together, those cases suggest something more interesting than another eligibility lawsuit:

Plaintiffs are increasingly building a second road around the NCAA's eligibility rules.

Antitrust is powerful, but it asks a lot from an individual athlete.

The athlete ordinarily must show more than:

This rule cost me another season.

Under the rule of reason, the plaintiff must establish a cognizable restraint and show substantial anticompetitive effects in a relevant market. That was precisely the problem in Picard. The court accepted that the NCAA's decision hurt Picard personally but found insufficient evidence that the denial harmed competition in the broader market for college athletes.

Contract litigation shifts the lens.

The plaintiff can instead argue that NCAA governing documents create enforceable obligations, that athletes are among the people those obligations are intended to protect, and that the NCAA administered those rules inconsistently or in bad faith.

That does not make the claim easy.

Athletes generally are not signatories to the agreement between the NCAA and its member institutions. They therefore may need to establish third-party-beneficiary status before enforcing it.

And if Utah law ultimately controls that issue in this case, Utah Supreme Court precedent requires a clear intent by the contracting parties to confer a separate and distinct benefit on the third party; merely benefiting from the agreement is not enough.

That could become the central doctrinal fight.

Is the NCAA rulebook merely an agreement among schools—or does it also contain promises athletes themselves can enforce?

If courts begin answering the second question yes, the significance would extend well beyond fifth-year eligibility.

First, Fried and Knudsen have not won anything yet. A complaint contains allegations and legal theories, not findings.

Second, this lawsuit does not mean every athlete who enrolled in 2022 is entitled to a fifth season. The NCAA's existing transition rule says the opposite for athletes who exhausted their final season in 2025-26.

Third, contract law is not automatically a shortcut around antitrust. Plaintiffs still must establish an enforceable contract, their right to enforce it, a breach and the requirements for whatever emergency relief they seek.

And finally, any ruling for these athletes would initially concern these plaintiffs and the relief actually ordered. It would not automatically create nationwide fifth-year eligibility.

Utah Tech is already eight matches into its 2026 season and hosts UC Riverside on September 18 in its home opener.

That means the litigation clock is not theoretical.

Every match played while eligibility remains unresolved is a competitive opportunity that cannot simply be recreated months later. That is why these disputes repeatedly turn into emergency-injunction fights rather than ordinary lawsuits moving on an ordinary schedule.

The business stakes are real, too.

Another season can mean another year of scholarship support, NIL opportunities, direct institutional compensation and additional athletic development. For schools, an unexpected fifth-year starter can alter roster construction, scholarship allocation and playing time for everyone behind her.

Eligibility litigation is no longer just about whether an athlete gets to play.

It is increasingly about who controls the economic value attached to that year of competition.

The first thing to watch is whether Fried and Knudsen seek—and obtain—emergency injunctive relief allowing them to compete while the case proceeds.

The second is how the NCAA attacks the contract theory. Expect the dispute to focus on whether the relevant NCAA documents actually create enforceable rights for athletes, whether the players are intended third-party beneficiaries, and whether the NCAA retained enough discretion under its transition rules to defeat any claimed breach.

But the larger question is already emerging.

For years, the defining legal threat to NCAA rules was antitrust.

The next front may be much more basic:

If the NCAA writes the rules, can athletes force it to live by them?