UNLV Lineman's Bid for Fifth Season Denied in Antitrust Decision

A federal judge in Nebraska denied UNLV offensive lineman Jack Hasz's motion for a preliminary injunction to play a fifth D-1 season this fall, reasoning that the NCAA's five-year eligibility rule falls outside the scope of antitrust scrutiny.

U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon ruled on July 24 ruled that while the NCAA's five-year rule which limits athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition-including JUCO competition in any sport within a five-year window, "has an incidental effect on Hasz's ability to earn NIL money by preventing him from playing an additional season," the rule "does not directly regulate commercial activity." Rather, the rule only decides "who can play college sports and for how long."

Bataillon explained the distinction's importance saying, "non-commercial behavior falls outside the scope of the Sherman Act." The Act governs business and economic restraint, not college athletes' eligibility rules.

Hasz is a Nebraska citizen who graduated from Creighton Prep in 2019. He began his college football journey that fall at Iowa Western Community College, a junior college that won the NJCAA National Championship in 2022 and 2023. Hasz redshirted in 2019 and played eight games in spring 2021 after the 2020 season was postponed due to COVID-19 (the 2020-21 season didn't count toward Hasz's four years of play due to an NCAA blanket pandemic waiver).

Hasz went on to transfer to the University of Buffalo, where he played for the Bulls in the 2021 and 2022 seasons. Hasz played only four games in 2021, which usually would count as a redshirt season. However, Hasz used his redshirt season in 2019, so 2021 was counted as a normal season. After transferring to UNLV, Hasz earned Honorable Mention All-Mountain West in addition to academic recognition. Hasz graduated from UNLV in spring 2024 with a bachelor's degree in economics.

The lineman wants to play at UNLV as a graduate student next year. However, this is forbidden by the NCAA's five-year rule.

Attorney Robert W. Futhey argued on Hasz's behalf that including his JUCO year constitutes an unlawful restraint of trade. Key to Hasz's case is his reading of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in (2021). While Alston is talking about what’s been called a “narrow subset” of NCAA rules restricting education-related benefits for student athletes, some, as Bataillon observed, insist "Alston stands for the proposition that all of the NCAA's rules are subject to scrutiny under Section 1 of the Sherman Act."

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn't make this argument. Therefore, Bataillon stated that an eligibility rule doesn't fall within the ambit of Alston since the rule is not about compensation, let alone the type of compensation at issue in Alston.

Bataillon acknowledged that judges in other areas of the country have tackled very similar cases. He also recognized that those judges often ruled in the player's favor, granting more eligibility.

Bataillon also addressed the NCAA's argument that, as the judge put it, "invaliding the five-year rule will invite scrutiny of all its other eligibility rules, undercutting its ability to effectively regulate collegiate athletics and turning it into little more than another professional sports organization rather than one focused on academics." Bataillon thought that the NCAA likely "overstated" this concern since the eligibility issue is "already being litigated in various courts across the country." Put another way, it's not as if Hasz's case is that impactful. There have been a number of eligibility cases in the aftermath of Vanderbilt quarterback and former JUCO transfer Diego Pavia receiving a court ruling last December to play another season this fall.

But the judge said the NCAA's point dismantles Hasz's case.

"To the extent Hasz tries to cast this as a hysterical slippery slope argument and urges the court to focus only on the five-year rule as it applies to him," Bataillon wrote, "this undermines his argument that the rule is, in fact, commercial … either the five-year rule has larger market impacts which affect him, or it is harmful only in his specific, narrow situation, but Hasz cannot have it both ways."

Hasz also didn't demonstrate that the money lost in NIL deals would do irreparable harm without an injunction.

"To the extent [Hasz] alleges he will lose out on NIL deals, any such harm is compensable through an award of monetary damages."

The judge didn't see Hasz's potential for an NFL career helping his case, either.

While "Hasz argues he will miss out on the opportunity to potentially play in the NFL which could harm his mental well-being," Bataillon wrote "there is no evidence of Hasz being scouted for the NFL [and thus] this harm remains too speculative to warrant an injunction."

James G. Powers and other attorneys from McGrath North and Dorsey & Whitney represented the NCAA in this case.

Sportico received a statement from an NCAA spokesperson saying, ""the NCAA stands by its eligibility rules, including the five-year rule." Those rules, the NCAA asserts "enable student-athletes and schools to have fair competition and ensure broad access to the unique and life-changing opportunity to be a student-athlete." The NCAA also notes that it is "making changes to modernize college sports" but finds "attempts to alter the enforcement of foundational eligibility rules-approved and supported by membership leaders" to only make a "shifting environment even more unsettled."

Hasz can appeal Bataillon's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.