With the announcement of Diego Pavia as a Heisman Finalist, an implausible football year for Vanderbilt University coasts to an end — thanks to a November 2024 lawsuit against the NCAA claiming that its eligibility rules violated the antitrust laws.

When a lawyer needs certainty in how a new law will be interpreted, a federal court of appeals decision provides needed certainty unless the US Supreme Court weighs in because courts of appeal have differing interpretations.

Sports cases reaching the courts of appeal recently, however, have not provided needed answers because the court of appeals has declined to answer the substantive issue in favor of a procedural decision. That happened in Pavia’s suit against the NCAA.

The rule at issue allows college athletes four years of intercollegiate competition in one sport.  Those four years must be completed within five calendar years of the first academic term in which the player enrolls at a full-time college. “Intercollegiate” competition includes seasons played for a two-year or a four-years institution “in any contest against outside competition.” 

Pavia’s suit against the NCAA yielded a preliminary injunction allowing him to play a fifth year of football for the 2025 season and precluding the NCAA from punishing Vanderbilt for his play.

The NCAA appealed the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and hope abounded that the issue of the NCAA eligibility rules would be resolved. 

Alas, the appeal was dismissed. The NCAA issued a waiver for all players in Pavia’s position to play one more season in 2025. Any player who had enrolled full-time and used a season of competition at a non-NCAA school could play in the 2025 season, as long as he had used his fourth and final season of competition in 2024 and was otherwise eligible. 

Because Pavia sought the preliminary injunction solely to allow him to play in 2025 and because the NCAA waiver gave Pavia the right to play in 2025, the appeal was moot, and the case has returned to the Tennessee district court on the issue of whether Pavia can play in 2026 and whether counting play at two-year institutions within the four-year limit on eligibility violates the Sherman Antitrust Act.

More recently, a group of female scholar athletes sued Stephen F. Austin University (SFA) after SFA discontinued the women’s beach volleyball and bowling teams, as well as the men’s and women’s golf teams. The issue was whether the university could shut down the programs in the face of Title IX’s prohibitions.

The district court entered an injunction ordering the university to “preserve the three female sports programs,” and the university appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  The Fifth Circuit ruled last week that the form of the injunction was not specific enough — ”preserving the programs” did not tell the university what steps it had to take with regard to the three programs.

Thus, two years after the NCAA and Stephen F. Austin as well as scholar athletes needed answers, none are available. And news stories of victories by either side are ephemeral as the cases return to the trial courts. The victory (or the loss) disappears like Lucy pulling the football at the last minute.