Ohio governor issues executive order in an attempt to grant 5th-year players immediate eligibility in the state

Is the NCAA about to be in another fight with state governments regarding its eligibility rules?

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) issued an executive order on Tuesday with the goal of preventing the NCAA from barring any class of 2022 athlete at a school in the state from playing a fifth season. The NCAA’s summer decision to grant players five years to play five seasons in their chosen sport only applied to athletes in the high school class of 2023 and younger. Players who graduated high school in 2022 and played four seasons in four years were prevented from getting a fifth season.

The NCAA’s rule has been challenged by numerous college athletes in state courts across the country. And DeWine’s executive order comes the same day that oral arguments were heard in Wisne v. NCAA, a federal antitrust case regarding the NCAA’s new rule.

Per the order, “no state institution of higher education or private college or university in Ohio shall uphold any rule, requirement, standard or other limitation that prevents a student-athlete of that institution or college in the Class of 2022 from fully participating in intercollegiate athletics in the 2026-27 academic year, regardless of whether the student-athlete completed four seasons of intercollegiate competition or exhausted eligibility under 2025-26 NCAA regulations or any prior regulations, and regardless of any athletic authority’s interpretation of applicable NCAA eligibility bylaws” including a provision that exempts players who have played in a professional sports league.

However, it’s unclear just how enforceable DeWine’s executive order would be regardless of a decision in the Wisne case. Executive orders are not laws, and it was a rash of state laws that led to the NCAA overhauling its NIL rules in the early 2020s.

As state legislatures across the country passed varying versions of bills that allowed college athletes to be compensated, the NCAA found itself in an uneatable position of dealing with different rules in different states. While other governors could soon follow suit and issue their own executive orders regarding fifth-year players, the NCAA is likely to keep fighting for its own interpretation of the fifth-year rule in federal court.