For many years running, NCAA eligibility has been a hot topic of conversation. Thanks to redshirt rules, COVID-19 eligibility and more loopholes have allowed some players to stay in college for six or seven years recently, which has drawn the ire of a lot of fans.
Now, the NCAA has made the change that many fans have been calling for to address this issue. On Tuesday, they approved a new age-based eligibility model that gives players five years of eligibility with no redshirts. Chris Vannini of The Athletic shared the specifics of the new model on social media on Tuesday.
There are no redshirts or extensions to the five-to-play-five model, so players who don’t get playing time as a young player will not be able to get an extension on their eligibility like they could previously. Some of the only exceptions are for pregnancy and military service.
There will also no longer be a window for older players to come back and play college sports. The window for your five years of eligibility comes when you turn 19 years old or when you enroll in college, whichever comes earliest. Say goodbye to the days where you would see players almost 30 years old take the field or the court.
There are still a number of issues that the NCAA must fix when it comes to college sports. The rampant culture that has come with the transfer portal, and the tampering that comes with it both during the season and outside of the season, is a major issue, and it is something that must be addressed. Whether it’s limiting free transfers or somehow cracking down on tampering, many fans of college sports want to see it mitigated somehow.
Still, the eligibility rules and the ability of some players to continue finding extra years to play college sports had become a major talking point in recent years, and fans were growing tired of it. This is a strong solution from the NCAA that should mitigate a lot of those problems for the foreseeable future.
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