World-champion wrestler sues NCAA over eligibility to compete for Iowa State

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AMES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) - A world-champion Cuban wrestler, Reineri Andreu Ortega, is suing the National Collegiate Athletic Association over rules that he says have unfairly barred him from wrestling for Iowa State University.

The lawsuit was filed this week by lawyers for Ortega, a student and prospective college wrestler at ISU, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The lawsuit challenges the NCAA’s so-called “Five-Year Eligibility Clock” and the manner in which the NCAA decides when that clock begins running and thus when a student’s eligibility to compete expires.

Attorneys for Ortega argue that the NCAA’s application of the rule violates antitrust laws and unjustifiably restrains the ability of Ortega and other college athletes to “earn meaningful compensation that is now available to (other) NCAA Division I athletes.”

The lawsuit has its origins in a 2021 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that paved the way for college athletes to receive compensation for use of their names, images, and likenesses. Since then, the market for name, image and likeness compensation opportunities available to NCAA Division I athletes has “exploded into a multi-million dollar industry,” the lawsuit claims.

However, the lawsuit adds, that form of compensation is largely available only to NCAA Division I athletes. Athletes who compete outside of what the lawsuit calls “the NCAA monopoly” have no meaningful opportunity to collect revenue-sharing income or profit from their name, image or likeness.

Under NCAA bylaws, an athlete has five years of eligibility to play four seasons of “intercollegiate competition” in his or her chosen sport. This five-year window is known as as the “eligibility clock” and begins to run from the date on which an athlete registers as a full-time student at any “collegiate institution” – regardless of whether the institution is a member of the NCAA and regardless of their participation in sports.

Lawyers for Ortega say this rule has had the effect of barring students from competing in NCAA sports even if they’ve never competed. They say students such as Ortega “can attend a non-NCAA college for three years without playing any sports, take two years off from school for personal reasons, transfer to a four-year NCAA school, and the student will have used all of their eligibility without ever having competed in a college sport for a non-NCAA or NCAA college.”

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