re: Why are there any rules for college sports for who is qualified to play?

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But a large part of that for athletes is online courses; I suspect a lot of those are tailored to athletes.

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They’ve actually got a term for it, it’s referred to as “hybrid” courses. In layman’s terms it means exactly what you think it means. Their course load and schedule is completely dictated by the football & basketball programs, meal schedules, most programs have their own private chefs, dietitians, and private dining facilities, work-out and strength training programs, and actual practices and meetings supersedes any academic scheduling.

They literally are above the law and do not have to abide by the rules that apply to every athlete in a non-revenue sport and your average enrollee.

The dirty little secret is that the Federal Graduation Rates(FGR) at land grant universities, which is actually tracked by the federal government, is atrocious since the introduction of the NIL. It’s roughly 42% for football and in the 20-25% for basketball at Power 5 land grant universities.

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Limiting employment opportunities is illegal.

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No it's not. Not everybody can be a physician, an air traffic controller, a FBI agent, etc. College athletics are no different.

The NCAA caused this. They have never held a standard and made exceptions without explanation over the years. NIL changed the pro aspect of the game.
The 5 for 5 is a great rule and should be absolute. If tom Brady has a year of eligibility left, let him return to Michigan.

The current lawsuits, especially the SEC, are due to conferences thinking they can bypass an injunction against the NCAA without appealing the injunction.

Hopefully the SEC gets held in contempt for attempting to violate the injunction.

I’m not siding with anything but the process.

5 for 5 any time, no restrictions as long as they are an enrolled student. I don’t care if they play for LSU on Saturday and the Saints on Sunday.

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Just wait until unions get involved. It is going to blow it all up.

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Good.

Then those who don’t want to “play school” can go to the CFL or form their own minor league. They don’t need “LSU” or “Ohio State” on their uniforms.

Baton Rouge Bengals vs Columbus Teletubbies for Week 1 of the 2029 mNFL season. Have at it.

Once the NCAA has an anti-trust exemption they can make the rules they want

Colleges don’t want to classify these players as employees because why?

Major conference college football and (mens) basketball stopped being just an amateur extracurricular activity a LONG time ago. They are actually very lucrative entertainment businesses. Just like the NFL and NBA. While major conference college football and basketball don't generate as much money as those leagues, they still (combined) generate revenues in the BILLIONS. The combined TV contracts of the ACC, Big 12, Big 10 and SEC generate nearly $3 Billion in revenue annually, alone. That's not counting the revenue the schools/conferences generate through other means (ticket/in-game sales, bowl appearances, licensing) etc. While those revenue streams are not exclusively limited to football and basketball, they are far and away the primary generator (Disney is not paying hundreds of millions for rights to broadcast SEC softball). The (mens) NCAA Tournament TV contract with the NCAA is valued at ~ $1 Billion annually.

What that means is there is only one true marketplace for major college football and basketball. Just like there is only one true marketplace in the US for professional football (NFL) and basketball (NBA). Both the NFL and NBA are monopolies. Legally, they should not be able to exist. However, they get around the fact both are monopolies by having collective bargaining between the employers (franchises/owners) and the labor (players). The NCAA and major conferences have de facto monopolies over the college football and basketball marketplace.

We've tiptoed around that increasing fact for decades by continuing to label major conference college football and basketball as "amateur athletics". However, with the amount of revenue both generate pretending they are just "amateur athletics" continues to become increasingly unrealistic. Over the last 20 years or so the players have recognized that and have compelling arguments to be entitled to share some of that massive revenue they are helping generate. That is the underlying reason why the NCAA continues to lose a lot of these eligibility disputes...because they are unlawful restraints of trade.

Previously, the players were willing to go along with the arbitrary eligibility rules (4 or even 5 years of eligibility to participate in the marketplace is just an arbitrary number). However, with every "exception" the NCAA has made over the past few decades to its eligibilities rules (medical redshirts, hardship redshirts, etc) it's created loopholes to challenge the eligibility rules. Now, in typical NCAA fashion, they are woefully late in trying to simplify the eligibility rules (5 for 5). But that may be too late. And with the SEC and other major conferences appearing to now collude against a certain class of players by hastily passing a retro-active rule specifically targeting those players, they are potentially making it harder to pretend they don't have a monopoly over the college football and basketball market.

That is going to push the envelope even further to where really the only eligibility requirement will be that a player is enrolled as a student at the school thus, theoretically, allowing a player to play 6, 8, 10+ years of college football or basketball (assuming a school will enroll him as a student at age 30....which schools will). The first step in trying to "fix" all of this is for the NCAA and major conferences to stop pretending major conference college football and basketball are just amateur athletics. They are big businesses. Start there!

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That is going to push the envelope even further to where really the only eligibility requirement will be that a player is enrolled as a student at the school thus, theoretically, allowing a player to play 6, 8, 10+ years of college football or basketball (assuming a school will enroll him as a student at age 30....which schools will).

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But say a school refuses to enroll a player. What’s to stop the courts from stepping in and forcing the school to enroll him just like they’re essentially doing by not letting the SEC impose penalties on schools?

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Schools refuse to enroll thousands of kids as students every year. I don't foresee a court forcing a school to enroll a guy as a student simply so he can play a college sport.

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Oh I don’t disagree with you here at all. But I’m also seeing things happen that I never thought I’d see.

For the record, I agree with everything you said in the post you made that I replied to.

But, your point about schools refusing to enroll students is at the heart of my next point. In the end, it’s their school and they can make the determination as to who can enroll, what the rules are, what the requirements for graduation are, etc etc. why then does the same theory not apply to college sports? In the end, it’s a volunteer activity. Even though we admit these guys are for all intents and purposes professionals, they’re still not technically employees of the school or employees of the conference or employees of the NCAA. If you have a lemonade stand, I volunteer to come work for you and am your top salesman, I still don’t get to tell you how to run your business or what rules and regulations you can impose. Now I can threaten to walk and then you have to decide whether it’s worth it to let me have input, but that’s the free market at work. Not some judge telling you you have to let me have a say. That’s the part about all this that I have a hard time with. This whole “restricting the market” or “restraint of trade” can (and will) be applied to pretty much every situation

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However, I think you will very soon see an argument that as long as a guy is enrolled as a student at a school, he is eligible to play sports for the school.

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This is absolutely going to happen