NCAA sues Ohio governor over his executive order allowing schools to ignore new eligibility rule

The NCAA sued the governor of Ohio on Friday, accusing him of trying to give college athletes in his state a “hall pass” to circumvent a rule that denies players who graduated high school in 2022 from a fifth year of eligibility.

NCAA President Charlie Baker called the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Ohio, an “extraordinary step” designed to prevent Gov. Mike DeWine from making it “impossible for all schools to compete on a level playing field.”

DeWine issued an executive order Tuesday that undercut the NCAA rule, approved over the summer. That and the NCAA’s federal lawsuit in reaction to it marks the latest tit-for-tat in a torrent of legal maneuverings that are creating new rules on a state-by-state basis.

“This whole thing has become comical,” Danny White, the athletic director at Tennessee, said on social media in reaction to the NCAA announcement.

Under DeWine’s order, public and private universities in Ohio would be able to allow the Class of ’22 athletes to play, even though the NCAA’s new guidance excludes those who have already played four seasons. The rule, passed in June, is the subject of multiple court fights.

In its court filing, the NCAA said it was trying “to halt a misguided attempt to give Ohio colleges and universities an unfair, unprecedented and unwarranted competitive advantage in stadiums and arenas throughout the country,”

“College sports, like all sports, depend on participants following the rules. (DeWine) is attempting to give Ohio institutions a hall pass to break the rules,” the lawsuit says.

In reaction to the governor’s move, the Ohio Supreme Court said it would step in and determine the legality of the executive order. As part of that, it paused an appeals court ruling in a case there that had declared the ’22 athletes ineligible. The court asked both sides to file briefs in the case, in which basketball player Filip Borovićanin is the lead plaintiff, by next Monday.

Baker said the NCAA did not believe the Supreme Court’s order did, in fact, declare those players immediately eligible to compete and said it would submit arguments in that case.

That case, like others around the country, is becoming more urgent by the day, as it involves a handful of basketball players whose status for the upcoming season is in jeopardy. Among them: Gonzaga transfer Javon Bennett, Cincinnati’s MJ Collins and Borovićanin himself, who played in an exhibition against Tennessee on Thursday night after DeWine’s order put him back on the eligible list.

The NCAA has long explained that it knew excluding the Class of ’22 from the five-year rule would cause those athletes hardship, but the decision was between them and the new class of high school recruits coming into college this year, many of whom would be displaced if the veterans were allowed another year.

Ultimately, the NCAA made its decision based on which move harmed fewer people.

The NCAA lawsuit goes through the history of the rule and the flood of legal actions that have come since. One of the original cases, a federal lawsuit involving basketball player Brock Wisne, is leaning in the NCAA’s direction, though victories there have only spawned more lawsuits in state court.

“The results of this second wave of lawsuits were mixed, with the NCAA winning some and losing others,” it said. “But the lawsuits unquestionably destabilized college sports, with ever-more disruptive lawsuits challenging foundational rules at the heart of organized sport.”

During testimony in a similar case in Kentucky earlier this week, an NCAA attorney asked Louisville basketball coach Pat Kelsey why he was among those looking for Class of ’22 athletes when the NCAA rules forbid that.

“From a coach’s standpoint, every time the NCAA says something, we all shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Is that going to stand up? Is that a rule?’” Kelsey said. “We don’t think there are rules right now. That’s why we want guardrails, we want Congress to act, we want the chaos to end. Because nobody knows what the crap is going on. No one.”

The NCAA has long called for a federal law to tamp down on the lawsuits undermining its rules for hundreds of thousands of athletes across the country. The Senate has sent the Protect College Sports Act to the House, where its fate is uncertain in this election year.