Matt Campbell abstaining from fifth-year drama looks brilliant after ruling reversal

On July 31, Judge Charlotte Sweeney of the U.S. District Court of Colorado granted a class-wide preliminary injunction that required the NCAA to deem all Class of 2022 athletes who had exhausted their four years of eligibility eligible for a fifth year after the NCAA refused to grandfather them into the new five-in-five age-based eligibility rules. 

On Friday, the NCAA was granted a stay, pending appeal, against that ruling, which stripped away the class-wide eligibility protection for Class of 2022 athletes. 

The injunction allowed players like Indiana defensive lineman Stephen Daley and others to return to college football. It has since been followed by other lawsuits, including a ruling this week in Louisiana that granted a temporary restraining order for 16 former college football players who signed NFL contracts this offseason to return to college football and required the NCAA to open the transfer portal. 

Those players, and any players who had been named as a plaintiff in a winning eligibility lawsuit at the state level this summer, are still eligible for a fifth year. Anyone relying on the federal injunction is now ineligible, pending appeal. 

There are major impacts on college basketball, but those players have time to file their own lawsuits to win their eligibility back. The college football season begins in eight days, however, so this is altering depth charts in real time. But that’s one thing that Penn State and Matt Campbell don’t have to worry about. 

Penn State isn’t riding the eligibility ruling roller coaster

Once the TRO was granted to 16 players this week, allowing them, and likely opening the door for others who signed NFL contracts to return to college football for this season, Matt Campbell was asked directly if he has considered adding a fifth-year player to his roster. He elaborated some, but the answer was simply: “No.” 

Penn State had to add 39 transfers after Campbell was hired, and 14 of the 16 freshmen he brought in had to be released from their deals with Iowa State to sign with the Nittany Lions. That was a major reshuffle, not to mention the coaching staff changes, with very few holdovers and Campbell’s longtime defensive coordinator, Jon Heacock, opting to retire rather than follow him to Happy Valley. 

Campbell brought plenty of familiar faces from Ames, but meshing those players with the James Franklin holdovers and outside transfers was no easy task. For a coach who has made his reputation off culture and development, a late preseason addition never made much sense, but now it’s clear he was right to resist the temptation. 

There weren’t many options for Penn State before the TRO was granted for those players to enter the transfer portal. But even in that case, bringing in a talented player who just left an NFL training camp to potentially upset the locker room for only a marginal improvement on the field and a massive lift in terms of onboarding before the season was an unnecessary risk. 

The teams that took it are either more desperate to win than a first-year head coach with an administration that appears willing to be patient, and/or a worse roster more clearly in need of an infusion of talent. This wouldn’t be like Indiana bringing back Daley to the same coaching staff and a familiar locker room or Ole Miss considering bringing back a few of its previous stars. This would be another new dynamic for a program that is still finding its new identity post-James Franklin. 

And now, many of the coaches who were willing to take that risk just got burned by this ruling.

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