In the latest court decision about an older Division I college athlete using antitrust law and NIL deals to keep playing in college after exhausting NCAA eligibility, 24-year-old Rutgers transfer Jett Elad has obtained a preliminary injunction to play for the Scarlet Knights this fall. 

U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi on Friday reasoned that NCAA eligibility rules limiting athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition–a term that counts junior college seasons–in any one sport are problematic under antitrust law. That’s because, Quraishi explained, D-I college football players are part of a “labor market” who can sign lucrative NIL deals. Players, the judge added, also use D-I football to prepare for the NFL, with the “injunction is potentially Elad’s only opportunity to complete his Division I career and transition into the NFL.” 

The injunction blocks the NCAA from rendering Elad ineligible for the fall season and should help his prospects in the 2026 NFL draft. It will also raise questions about whether college sports are morphing into something that too closely mimics pro sports and minor leagues.

Key to Quraishi’s decision was testimony by Rutgers head football coach Greg Schiano, who told the judge that Elad “is an NFL-caliber safety” and predicted if Elad can stay healthy and continue to develop, “he’ll be an NFL safety.” Observing that Schiano, who was head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2012 to 2013, is a former NFL coach, Quraishi highlighted how Schiano painted “a dimmer picture” of Elad’s NFL future if he can’t keep playing in college.

“[Elad] did not go through any of the pro—all the NFL things that lead up to the draft. He did not go through pro day,” Schiano testified in a recent court hearing. “He did not have the opportunity to be invited to the combine. He did none of that, under the impression that he was going to be able to play another season of college football.”

Schiano’s testimony helped to persuade Quraishi that an eligibility rule denying Elad a chance to ply his trade is problematic under antitrust law. This is a body of law that protects market competition—including the selling of athletes’ services to teams–and can be used to challenge restrictions on commercial opportunities.

Elad began his college football career in 2019, though his first two seasons included a redshirt year and a year largely lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rutgers is Elad’s fourth school, and he previously played at Ohio University, Garden City Community College in Kansas and UNLV. Elad has attributed his nomadic collegiate path as reflecting a lack of preparedness for college life, injuries, coaching schemes, and rebuilding his football career at a junior college in hopes of returning to D-I and getting on the radar of NFL teams. If Elad’s junior college season at Garden City counts toward his NCAA eligibility, he’s ineligible since he played four seasons (2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024) in five years (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024).

Elad’s case is one of a growing—and conflicting—body of case law concerning older college athletes who eye NIL deals and the chance to challenge exhaustion of their NCAA eligibility. These cases raise the core question of whether NCAA eligibility rules are best understood as (1) non-commercial and educational in nature in that they govern college students who play school-sponsored sports or (2) market restraints on quasi pro athletes who earn NIL deals and, if the House settlement is approved, will score shares of average power conference athletic media, ticket and sponsorship revenue. Antitrust law governs commercial restrictions, meaning eligibility rules when viewed through the first understanding are exempt from antitrust law or likely to comply with antitrust law whereas those same rules viewed through the second understanding are more problematic.

The legal scoresheet is mixed. Judges in North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas and Massachusetts have declined to issue injunctions for the plaintiff- athletes, whereas judges in Wisconsin and now New Jersey have granted injunctions. In Tennessee, a baseball player (Tennessee’s Alberto Osuna) lost, while a football player (Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia) won. 

Pavia, a quarterback and former junior college transfer, is key to Elad’s case. Last December, Pavia obtained an injunction to play this fall. The NCAA then granted a waiver to permit similarly situated former JUCO players to play a fourth year of D-I in fall 2025 or spring 2026. Pavia’s situation was different from that of Elad because Pavia did not redshirt, and he played three D-I seasons in three years rather than three D-I seasons in four years. However, Elad and Rutgers hoped the overall similarity of the two players’ plights would allow Elad to play this fall. That hope was dashed in February, when the NCAA denied Rutgers a waiver.

Quraishi found Elad’s commercial opportunities as crucial when applying the law. The judge stressed that Elad’s decision to join Rutgers “was based in part on a NIL deal for $550,000 compensation, with an additional $100,000 incentive bonus if he is named to the All-Big Ten First Team.” 

Quraishi also underscored market realities in the relationship between NIL opportunities and the seasoning of college athletes.

“Elad’s NIL agreement,” the judge wrote, “is a real-life example of a wider phenomenon that Schiano acknowledged at the hearing: Older, more experienced players generally receive more NIL compensation than younger, less experienced players at the same position.” 

Further, Quraishi found Schiano’s testimony that “no one’s laughing now” about NIL deals as legally important since NIL deals for some athletes–including those who will come up a bit short in pursuing the NFL–can be lucrative. Likewise, the judge emphasized Schiano’s testimony where the coach said, “this is serious money that’s being exchanged, big time.”

The judge also suggested it’s problematic for the NCAA to define intercollegiate competition as inclusive of junior college play but exclusive of “post-secondary educational institutions like prep schools.” Quoting a transcript of testimony from the proceedings, Quraishi wrote that both junior college and post-secondary schools can help a player “who’s not ready academically or athletically, or both,” to play D-I college sports, yet a player “can go and spend as many years as he wants at a Hotchkiss or a Choate and that doesn’t count against him at all under the NCAA rules.”

Quraishi cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in NCAA v. Alston (2021) as precedent consistent with a viewpoint of D-I football as a marketplace for NIL deals. The judge wrote that “in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Alston,” the NCAA “dramatically altered course and began to allow student-athletes to earn compensation for their name, image, and likeness.” 

Quraishi’s take on Alston is certain to be challenged by the NCAA on appeal. Although Alston is popularly linked to NIL, the case was not about NIL or paying college athletes to play sports—indeed, neither “name, image and likeness” nor “NIL” appears once in the more than 13,000 words covering the majority and concurring opinions. Alston concerned the compatibility of NCAA rule restrictions on education-related expenses, such as costs related to study abroad programs, postgraduate scholarships, vocational school scholarships and technology fees, with antitrust law.

Quraishi also deemed relevant precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Quraishi and other federal district judges in New Jersey, as unpersuasive considering the realities of contemporary college sports. 

The NCAA highlighted how in Smith v. NCAA (1998), the Third Circuit found NCAA eligibility rules are not commercial and thus exempt from antitrust scrutiny. While Quraishi wrote he would ordinarily “yield” to Third Circuit precedent, “things have changed substantially in the twenty-five years that have elapsed since Smith” given the rise of NIL.

The NCAA can, and almost certainly will, appeal Quraishi’s ruling to the Third Circuit, where the association will argue precedent is on its side. Although Congress has thus far been unwilling or unable to tackle college sports issues, it’s possible the topic of eligibility rules and the now patchwork of conflicting rulings across the states might attract a broader consensus on Capitol Hill.

In a statement shared with Sportico, an NCAA spokesperson said the association “supports all student-athletes maximizing their name, image and likeness potential, but [Quraishi’s] ruling creates even more uncertainty and may lead to countless high school students losing opportunities to compete in college athletics.” The spokesperson emphasized that eligibility rules are intended to “align collegiate academic and athletic careers” and “are designed to help ensure competition is safe and fair for current and future student-athletes.”