The Diego Pavia lawsuit is an antitrust case filed against the NCAA in November 2024, in which the Vanderbilt quarterback argued that NCAA rules counting his junior college seasons against his Division I eligibility violated Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. A federal judge granted Pavia a preliminary injunction in December 2024, letting him play a fifth college season in 2025. The NCAA followed with a blanket waiver for similarly situated athletes, and the litigation has since expanded to 18 plaintiffs with a trial scheduled for February 2027.
What Pavia Challenged
Pavia filed suit on November 8, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, case number 3:24-cv-01336. He had played one COVID-shortened season and one championship season at New Mexico Military Institute, then two seasons at New Mexico State, before transferring to Vanderbilt. Under NCAA Division I Bylaw 12.02.6, seasons played at “a two-year or a four-year collegiate institution” count as intercollegiate competition against a player’s four-season cap. That math left Pavia out of eligibility for 2025.
His complaint, filed by attorney Ryan Downton of The Texas Trial Group, targeted three interlocking bylaws:
- Bylaw 12.8, the Five-Year Rule, which limits athletes to four seasons within five calendar years and starts the clock at first full-time enrollment at any collegiate institution, including a junior college.
- Bylaw 12.02.6, the Intercollegiate Competition Rule, which counts two-year college seasons against the Division I total.
- Bylaw 14.3.3, the Three-Year Transfer Limitation, which caps junior college transfers at three Division I seasons.
The core argument was that these rules restrict former junior college players’ ability to compete and earn name, image, and likeness compensation, while athletes who attend prep schools or take other non-NCAA paths face no equivalent penalty. Pavia asked the court to rule that the eligibility clock should begin only when a player enrolls at an NCAA member institution. He estimated potential NIL earnings above $1 million for the 2025 season.
The Preliminary Injunction
Chief Judge William L. Campbell Jr. denied an emergency temporary restraining order on November 12, 2024, then held a preliminary injunction hearing on December 4. On December 18, 2024, he granted the injunction.
Judge Campbell found that Pavia had shown a “strong likelihood of success” on his antitrust claim. Applying the rule-of-reason framework from the Supreme Court’s decision in NCAA v. Alston (2021), he concluded the junior college eligibility rules were “restraints on trade with substantial anticompetitive effects” that gave “a competitive advantage to NCAA Division I member schools over junior colleges.” He noted the inconsistency of penalizing junior college transfers while leaving prep school athletes’ eligibility clocks alone.
The court rejected the NCAA’s arguments that the rules were essential to preserving a “differentiated athletic product” or aligning athletic and academic progression. The injunction applied only to Pavia, granting him one additional season in 2025 and barring the NCAA from punishing Vanderbilt for playing him.
The NCAA’s Blanket Waiver
On December 23, 2024, five days after the injunction, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved a blanket waiver for the 2025-26 academic year. It granted one additional season of eligibility to athletes who had enrolled full-time and used at least one season of competition at a non-NCAA institution and who would otherwise have exhausted eligibility after 2024-25. Athletes still had to meet other eligibility requirements, including degree progress and remaining time inside the five-year window. Crucially, the waiver did not extend the five-year clock itself.
The NCAA simultaneously appealed Judge Campbell’s injunction to the Sixth Circuit.
The Sixth Circuit Ruling
On October 1, 2025, a Sixth Circuit panel of Judges Amul Thapar, Chad Readler, and Whitney Hermandorfer dismissed the NCAA’s appeal, case number 24-6153, as moot. The court reasoned that the blanket waiver had given Pavia the “complete relief” he sought at the preliminary injunction stage, and because the NCAA said the waiver would stand for 2025 regardless of the appeal, any ruling would have no practical effect. The panel declined to vacate the underlying injunction, noting the NCAA had caused the mootness itself and had not met the burden for vacatur.
The concurring opinions carried the substantive commentary. Judge Thapar warned that judicial review of eligibility rules could turn courts into “a de facto appeals body” for more than half a million student-athletes, and he flagged the absence of “substantial economic evidence” defining the relevant labor markets. Judge Hermandorfer wrote that Alston had ended the NCAA’s ability to invoke “amateurism” as a blanket shield from antitrust scrutiny in an era of compensated athletes. Both suggested Congress may need to step in.
How the Case Grew
Because the NCAA’s waiver did not extend the five-year clock, many former junior college players remained ineligible despite it. The NCAA denied individual waiver requests from players including Christopher Bellamy and Demarcus Griffin in mid-2025.
In July 2025, Bellamy, Griffin, TJ Smith, and Targhee Lambson filed a separate complaint seeking injunctive relief. Judge Campbell denied their preliminary injunction motion on August 7, 2025, pointing to a lack of urgency and speculative harm for some plaintiffs who had delayed seeking relief until after teams began practice. That case, Bellamy et al. v. NCAA, was consolidated into the Pavia litigation on November 4, 2025.
On November 21, 2025, Pavia’s team filed a First Amended Complaint listing 18 plaintiffs, including athletes from Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, Tennessee, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Oklahoma State, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico, Illinois, and Florida Atlantic. Among them was Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar, a former Diablo Valley Community College player. The amended complaint asks the court to rule that the five-year clock starts only upon enrollment at an NCAA member institution, that junior college seasons should not count against the four-season limit, and that athletes whose eligibility expired during the lawsuit should get an extension through 2026-27.
Where Other Courts Have Landed
Pavia’s outcome is not the only word on these rules, and other federal courts have gone the other way.
In Osuna Sanchez v. NCAA, filed in the Eastern District of Tennessee, a college baseball player sought nearly identical relief. On February 12, 2025, Judge Charles Atchley denied a preliminary injunction, ruling that Osuna had failed to prove the junior college rule produces “substantial anticompetitive effects.” Judge Atchley added that “for an organization that professes to prioritize the well-being of its student-athletes, the NCAA’s conduct has in many ways been questionable at best and self-interested at worst.”
The Third Circuit, in Elad v. NCAA on November 25, 2025, vacated a preliminary injunction that had blocked the NCAA from enforcing the rule against another former junior college player. The court held the lower court erred by relying on the market definition from Alston rather than performing its own evidence-based market analysis. It specifically criticized the Pavia decision for relying “almost exclusively on Alston or other case law to define the relevant market” rather than on empirical data.
In the Seventh Circuit, Fourqurean v. NCAA involved a University of Wisconsin defensive back who had transferred from Division II Grand Valley State. On July 16, 2025, the Seventh Circuit reversed a district court injunction in his favor, holding that evidence of one player’s personal exclusion was not enough to show market-wide anticompetitive harm under the rule of reason. A dissent argued the reversal caused Fourqurean irreparable harm.
Current Status and Trial Date
On February 10, 2026, Judge Campbell held a hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for a broader preliminary injunction covering all former junior college players. A ruling was expected within weeks, though no decision had been published as of available reporting. On February 20, 2026, Judge Campbell set trial for February 2027.
The NCAA has argued in filings that accepting the plaintiffs’ position could allow athletes to theoretically compete in up to 18 total seasons of intercollegiate competition across various levels, warning of “gradual erosion of longstanding rules.”
Pavia himself declared for the 2026 NFL Draft, went undrafted, and signed a three-year contract with the Baltimore Ravens as an undrafted free agent. His attorneys had said in earlier filings he would “seriously entertain” additional college eligibility if the litigation opened that door, but his signing with Baltimore points to the end of his college career even as the case he began moves toward trial with a growing plaintiff group.