Katherine Crytzer, a 41-year-old federal judge appointed by President Trump to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, saved the college sports world a huge headache on Thursday. By denying an injunction that could have granted former Tennessee basketball star Zakai Zeigler a fifth year of eligibility, thus opening the floodgates on athletes potentially earning NIL money far beyond their college lifespan, the NCAA’s ability to enforce its four-year rule seems somewhat safe – for now.
“This Court is a court of law, not policy,” she wrote. “What the NCAA should do as a policy matter to benefit student athletes is beyond the reach of the Sherman Act and (Tennessee law) and by extension, this Court.”
But Zeigler’s petition should set off major alarm bells for this new world of college sports – not because he filed it (which is his right as an American), but because Tennessee’s athletic department seemed to support an idea that would spark the kind of chaos power-conference schools have spent months trying to fix.
On Saturday, one day after Judge Claudia Wilken approved the landmark House vs. NCAA settlement, Tennessee’s senior deputy athletics director/chief revenue officer Ryan Alpert filed an affidavit telling Judge Crytzer that Zeigler would have a “guaranteed spot” on its 2025-26 basketball team, which would of course also mean a large NIL payment coming his way via the terms of the House settlement.
We assumed from the beginning that Zeigler being granted a fifth year would mean a return to Tennessee, where he played 138 games and graduated, thus extinguishing his eligibility. But to see it on the record from a Tennessee official in this context can only be interpreted one way: Tennessee was willing to undermine a key component of the House settlement on behalf of a player it wanted back on its basketball team.
It’s especially stunning given that Monday of this week, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey joined four of his colleagues on a call with the media to discuss the settlement finally going into practice.
Undergirding the settlement, which grants schools the ability to pay college athletes from an initial $20.5 million pool of revenue per school, is a new College Sports Commission being formed by the four power conferences that will be charged with enforcing the salary cap and other regulatory duties. Everyone understands the only hope to bring order to the last several years of NIL and transfer chaos is if schools take the terms of the settlement seriously and not look for ways to get around it by lining up sham NIL deals for recruits. That’s why schools have pledged to sign a document affirming the CSC’s authority and forfeiting the ability to sue if things don’t go their way.
“I’ve asked at every level … our university presidents and chancellors, our athletics directors, our head coaches: If you want an unregulated, open system, just raise your hand and let me know,” Sankey said. “And universally, the answer is: ‘No. We want oversight. We want guardrails. We want structures.’
“Those individuals don’t have the luxury to just say that in meeting rooms. Period. They don’t have the luxury to just be anonymous sources. They have a responsibility to make what they’ve sought, what they’ve asked for – to make it work.’
But, as the entire history of college sports has shown, push comes to shove when a coach or an athletics director has an opportunity to go around the rules and add a player to their team who will help them win more games, thus enhancing their job security and increasing their bank account. Easy to say you’re committed to the new system in a meeting with the SEC commissioner, but hard to put in practice when tangible stuff is on the line.
We can already see that in Tennessee’s support for Zeigler’s eligibility case, which was just a blatant attempt to blow up a longstanding NCAA rule that the vast majority of administrators support.
I reached out to Tennessee for clarification of its position on Thursday morning, coincidentally, a couple of hours before Zeigler’s injunction was denied, and then again after. They’re not going to comment on his case.
What Tennessee officials would likely say if they did comment is that they had nothing to do with Zeigler’s case and that they filed the affidavit simply out of loyalty and support to their former player.
Fair enough.
But everyone needs to understand how big of a red flag this is already for the new world of college sports.
For various reasons, a large number of college athletes are going to feel wronged or aggrieved in this new system or simply search for ways to make more money beyond the salary cap. And unless Congress passes a law with some kind of antitrust exemption, which doesn’t seem likely anytime soon, they will have a legal right to challenge it with an army of lawyers ready and willing to take their cases.
Like Zeigler, they have little to lose and potentially millions of dollars to gain. In some cases, they also have state legislatures like the one in Tennessee making laws that say NCAA rules don’t apply in their state.
You can’t blame the athlete for that. But you can blame a school that puts into the legal record that it would be willing to, at minimum, violate the spirit of the system it built that was designed to give rule-making and enforcement power back to the schools.
Schools have a choice: They can either have the system they say they want, or they can have rogue legislatures looking to build competitive advantages for good old State U into their laws. They can’t have both.
When Sankey shakes his finger at the media, talking about how his member schools are fully bought-in to coloring within the lines of the House settlement, the rest of college sports rolls its eyes. At the end of the day, are the people at Alabama or Georgia going to really be OK with losing a big recruit to a school with more salary-cap space?
That’s what we’re talking about here. That’s the whole deal. And if that doesn’t work, the House settlement isn’t going to be worth the paper it’s written on.
An SEC spokesperson did not return a text message asking for the league’s interpretation of Tennessee supporting Zeigler’s attempt to get a fifth year by guaranteeing his roster spot. And now, thanks to Judge Crytzer, this specific issue is moot.
But it’s merely a canary in the coal mine. There are going to be more Zeiglers, more Tennessee athletic departments and more Tennessee legislatures, constantly challenging the terms of the House settlement and the College Sports Commission’s authority to do its job because, in the end, those actions will help them win games.
Will schools stand firm on their own principles? Maybe in meeting rooms with Commissioner Sankey. But in the real world? Good luck.