ESPN article shows how the SEC fukked themselves in BR

Pretty objective account. Good read!

LINK

While delivering his decision shortly after 8 p.m. local time, Jorden said he arrived at the hearing with a sense that he would rule against the players. Despite feeling that the distinctions the NCAA and SEC were trying to draw between their athletes and professionals seemed "arbitrary and capricious," Jorden said he was "very, very skeptical" the players' attorneys would be able to prove they had the legal standing to show either the NCAA or SEC had breached a contract.

"Even with all that silliness, if they don't have standing we don't get here," Jorden said. "I was ready to come out here and say, 'Y'all gave it a good shot, but you don't have standing.' ... And then something happened."

What happened was the players' attorneys provided Jorden with a copy of the NCAA's freshly printed rules manual for the 2026-27 school year. In the manual, Rule 12.6 states that as of Aug. 1 any athlete who was within five years of finishing high school or their 19th birthday was eligible to play five seasons of college sports. It did not explicitly say that if a player had exhausted eligibility under the old rules, then the new rules wouldn't apply to him or her.

And so, while Wright, Harris and their fellow plaintiffs may have been ineligible from the end of their last game up until July 30, they could make an argument that they became eligible to play when the new rules went into effect Aug. 1. They could argue they had legal standing.

Downton said after the hearing that he had discovered the new manual -- and the apparent oversight in how the rules were written -- two days before the hearing. The change was fresh enough that Sankey said during his testimony that he had not yet seen how the rule was worded in the NCAA's new manual.