Group of College Athletes Sue NCAA Over Redshirt Rules

A group of college athletes, led by Vanderbilt linebacker Langston Patterson, have filed a class action lawsuit against the NCAA over the organization's redshirt rules, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

The goal of the class action lawsuit is to enact a rule change to NCAA eligibility for redshirted players. The lawsuit calls for the NCAA to enact a "five-for-five" rule, which means that college athletes would have five seasons of eligibility over a five-year period. The current rules allow for five seasons of eligibility, but student-athletes can only participate in four of them with one additional year of being redshirted.

"We are not challenging the NCAA's rule limiting players to five years of eligibility to play college sports or the concept of a defined eligibility period generally," co-counsel Ryan Downton told CBS Sports. "But the NCAA has no basis to prohibit a player who is working just as hard as all of his teammates in practice, in the weight room, and in the classroom from stepping on the field or court to compete against another school in one of those seasons."

The class action lawsuit targeting the redshirt rule comes after Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia sued the NCAA last year as he sought a sixth year of eligibility. A federal judge granted Pavia an injunction for this football season and ruled that his junior college seasons in 2020 and '21 should not count against his NCAA eligibility. The premise was that the NCAA's eligibility rules were in violation of antitrust laws because they impeded Pavia's pathway to making money off Name, Image and Likeness.

It remains to be seen how redshirt rules will be impacted by the lawsuit, but more changes could be coming to college athletics in a time where the only constant in the landscape is change.