What Mizzou's Coaches Think About a Proposed '5-in-5' Eligibility Model

After years with a lack of clarity and consistency for eligibility, the NCAA is inching toward adopting a model that would significantly change how eligibility works.

The potential new model focuses on age, and would remove redshirts. Each student-athlete would have five years of eligibility that begins the academic year after they turn 19 or graduate high school, whichever happens first.

NCAA president Charlie Baker told ESPN he is "pretty optimistic" that the rule will pass in the near future. However, Baker also said that the new rules would not be retroactive — players who have already exhausted their eligibility, or are set to at the end of the spring 2026 term would not earn any additional eligibility.

Missouri Director of Athletics Laird Veatch believes the model would begin provide some stabilization to a question that has been the focus of several lawsuits and rule changes over recent years.

“I’m excited about it, like many in my space, because I think it begins to provide some stabilization to some of the things that we’re managing these days," Veatch said Wednesday at a 'ZOU to YOU' fan event in St. Louis. 'Even if you think of it from a competitor standpoint. If you’re a student-athlete and you are competing in that environment, that’s what you want to compete against. You want to compete with people in your same age range. Go back to just what college athletics is supposed to be about."

The impact this model would have would probably be slightly different for each sport, including across football, men's basketball and women's basketball.

For men's basketball, it virtually wouldn't change anything for players who plan to just spend one season in college before declaring for the NBA draft. But for others, it would obviously provide another year to develop and for N.I.L. earnings.

For Missouri coach Dennis Gates, he thinks this change would be the first of many more that could come in regards to reaching solid ground on eligibility.

"It's the evolution of our game," Gates said. "...I think at some point is going to evolve even further than five-in-five. I think it would evolve to student athletes having a count of how many games they can actually play over a period of time."

Feb 21, 2026; Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA; Missouri Tigers head coach Dennis Gates during the second half against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Bud Walton Arena. Arkansas won 94-86. | Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images

For all sports, the transfer portal would include even more talent with another class in the mix. Especially for women's basketball, where more athletes typically spend more time than male athletes in college before declaring for the draft.

As with every change to college athletics, this significant move would be just the first domino in a chain of other changes that would come, either intentionally or unintentionally.

"I think it's in the back of our minds, but right now, we're really just trying to put our team together for next year," Missouri women's basketball coach Kellie Harper said." And so I think for us, start there, and then when we get new rules, we'll figure out what new rules we're playing with and start working through that. Because, if they add that, the last time they opened up the five year, they they extended your roster number. So I don't even know what you know, what other things will go with that. So we'll just kind of take that in stride."

In football, this move would likely have an impact on high school recruiting, with coaching staffs being able to give more playing time early in an athlete's career, given that there no longer needs to be any concern in preserving a redshirt. However, once it catches up to the point where every active student-athlete's eligibility is built under this rule, the talent pool on the roster would include an additional group of players that otherwise wouldn't have eligibility for those younger players to compete with.

For Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, with no immediate impact on his roster, he's being patient to see how it will play out.

"Honestly, I haven't paid that any attention, because the last thing and I heard was it wasn't going to be retroactive," Drinkwitz said. "So if that passes or if that becomes something that we do, then we'll tackle it like we did with the extra COVID year and see how that plays out. But it's not something that consumes my time."

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