The NCAA Stopped a Nationwide Fifth-Year Injunction. A Texas Judge Just Rebuilt It for One Baylor Player.

Rapid Response / Legal Alert | September 15, 2026

The NCAA won an important appellate victory last month when the Tenth Circuit stopped a nationwide injunction that would have protected an entire class of fifth-year athletes.

That victory did not end the eligibility fight.

It moved it.

On Tuesday, September 15, Judge Alan Bennett of Texas’s 474th State District Court granted Baylor defensive lineman Traevon Mitchell a temporary injunction, allowing him to remain eligible while his lawsuit against the NCAA proceeds. A trial is reportedly set approximately 90 days away, meaning the order—unless stayed or reversed—should effectively cover the remainder of Baylor’s regular season.

Mitchell had already received a temporary restraining order on September 2 that cleared him for Baylor’s first two games. Tuesday’s ruling extends that protection substantially.

But the more interesting story is how he got here.

Mitchell’s procedural path looks increasingly like a blueprint:

Nationwide injunction → appellate stay → individual lawsuit → state-court injunction.

If enough athletes can repeat that sequence, the NCAA can defeat nationwide relief without actually restoring nationwide uniformity.

Mitchell graduated from high school in 2022 and played his first two college seasons at Chowan University, followed by a season at West Florida and another at South Florida. He entered the transfer portal after the 2025 season, went undrafted in the 2026 NFL Draft and eventually committed to Baylor on August 12.

His eligibility problem comes from the NCAA’s transition to its new age-based eligibility model.

In June, the NCAA’s Division I Cabinet approved a major rewrite of the eligibility system. Under the new model, qualifying athletes generally receive a continuous five-year eligibility period beginning with full-time college enrollment or the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever comes first. The system eliminates the traditional four-seasons-of-competition limit for athletes governed by the new rule.

The NCAA is careful to say this is not actually a universal “five-for-five” guarantee.

And that distinction matters here.

The transition rules expressly provide that athletes who used their final season of competition during 2025–26 receive no additional eligibility. Athletes who still had eligibility remaining after that year, by contrast, can generally use either the old rules or the new age-based model, whichever is more favorable.

Mitchell falls into the group left on the wrong side of that line.

His lawsuit attacks that distinction as arbitrary, arguing that the NCAA created a system under which some athletes can receive five years of competition while athletes in his position remain limited to four. His complaint also points to other categories of athletes—including certain redshirts, COVID-era athletes and athletes with previous professional experience—who may receive opportunities unavailable to him.

Mitchell initially appeared to have a solution without filing his own lawsuit.

On July 31, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney granted preliminary relief in Wisne v. NCAA to athletes challenging the transition rules under federal antitrust law. The court concluded that the plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of success and enjoined the NCAA from preventing the plaintiff class from competing in a fifth season under the challenged rule.

That was potentially transformative because it offered something college sports badly needs: one answer applied broadly.

Then the Tenth Circuit intervened.

On August 21, the appellate court granted the NCAA’s request to stay the Wisne injunction while the appeal proceeds. The Colorado district court consequently denied a pending enforcement motion as moot because its injunction was no longer operative.

For the NCAA, that was a meaningful victory.

But Mitchell shows its limitation.

Once the national protection disappeared, he filed in McLennan County, Texas. He obtained a TRO. He played for Baylor. And now he has obtained a longer-lasting temporary injunction.

The NCAA stopped one nationwide order.

It did not stop the litigation.

College sports increasingly has a uniformity problem disguised as an eligibility problem.

The NCAA can write one rule for Division I athletics. But if athletes can obtain different answers from judges in Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, California and elsewhere, the operative rule may depend less on NCAA legislation than on where litigation is filed.

That creates obvious competitive consequences.

One school may be permitted to use an athlete whom a similarly situated athlete at another school cannot replicate without filing his own lawsuit. Coaches cannot know with certainty who will be available months later. Athletic departments must make roster and compensation decisions around temporary court orders. Athletes face pressure to litigate quickly because every missed game is effectively irrecoverable.

And once one athlete succeeds, the incentive for the next athlete to sue grows.

That is why Mitchell’s case matters more than one Baylor defensive lineman receiving another season.

The practical lesson from Wisne may be that defeating a nationwide injunction does not end a national challenge. It can instead atomize the challenge into dozens of individual cases.

For the NCAA, that may be worse operationally.

One nationwide case can produce one appellate record and, eventually, one answer.

Forty individual lawsuits can produce forty injunction hearings, forty procedural calendars and potentially forty different answers.

Mitchell has not won the underlying case.

A temporary injunction preserves the status quo while the litigation proceeds; it is not a final adjudication that the NCAA’s eligibility rule is unlawful.

The ruling also does not restore the nationwide Wisne injunction. The Tenth Circuit’s August 21 stay remains in place.

Nor does Judge Bennett’s order automatically make other Class-of-2022 athletes eligible. Its immediate protection is Mitchell’s.

And the NCAA still has options. Texas law permits interlocutory appeals from orders granting temporary injunctions, meaning the NCAA can seek appellate review without waiting for a final trial judgment.

So “Mitchell can play” should not be confused with “the NCAA lost the five-year eligibility fight.”

The latter remains very much unresolved.

There is another interesting feature of Mitchell’s story.

He entered the transfer portal, pursued professional football, went undrafted in the 2026 NFL Draft and then returned to college football through the opening created by the eligibility litigation.

That places him alongside a growing group of athletes testing the old assumption that the path from college to professional sports runs in only one direction.

College sports now offers direct institutional compensation, NIL opportunities, another year of development and national exposure. For some athletes, returning to college after exploring professional opportunities may make substantial economic sense.

Eligibility litigation is helping make that possibility real.

The immediate question is whether the NCAA seeks appellate relief from Mitchell’s injunction.

The larger case to watch remains Wisne. The Tenth Circuit appeal could eventually determine whether the NCAA’s transition into the new age-based system survives federal antitrust scrutiny on a class-wide basis.

But between now and then, athletes have discovered another route.

They do not necessarily have to wait for Wisne.

They can sue themselves.

That means the NCAA’s real problem may no longer be a single nationwide injunction.

It may be what replaced it.

A nationwide eligibility fight is becoming a state-by-state eligibility system.