Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz was in the midst of a 10-minute teleconference with reporters Wednesday when he learned that a St. Louis County judge had denied the NCAA’s motion to dismiss a temporary restraining order, clearing defensive tackle Sterling Webb to play for the 25th-ranked Tigers this season.
The news came little more than 24 hours before the opener against Arkansas Pine-Bluff on Thursday night.
Such is the chaotic nature of college athletics these days, with a multitude of cases slowly winding their way through the judicial system with rosters across the country in limbo as the season begins.
“It looks like we’re ready to go!” Drinkwitz exclaimed, upon hearing the news of Webb’s availability from a reporter’s tweet. “You just wait for the tweets. That’s what you do. You (reporters) wait for injury reports to tell you who’s in and who’s out. We wait for tweets from judges to tell you who’s in and who’s out. What a system we have.”
Webb was granted a temporary restraining in late July so that he could play a fifth season under rules that were recently adopted by the NCAA. The new eligibility model allows five seasons of competition in a five-year period, beginning with an athlete’s full-time enrollment or the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever occurs first. But it was not supposed to include athletes who exhausted their eligibility under the old model after last season, and that has left those athletes challenging the plan in court.
Webb, one of the Tigers’ most experienced players, has been practicing ever since he was granted the order, and he should play plenty against Arkansas Pine-Bluff in their opener. He’s made 11 starts and appeared in 25 games over the past two seasons.
Nearly 400 athletes have sued the NCAA and other defendants, seeking additional eligibility and claiming the organization’s 5-in-5 rule is unfair because it excludes members of the high school Class of 2022. More than 30 lawsuits, several of them in federal court, are in different stages of litigation. Some include a handful athletes who signed professional contracts, which prompted every Power Four conference and others in the Bowl Subdivision to ban pros from returning to college – leading to even more court filings.
Drinkwitz has been among the coaches in multiple sports who have been vocal in their disdain for the state of college sports.
“College athletics is not in a great place. I said this several years ago when we had announcement of conference changes in the middle of fall camp, and I said, ‘Who considered the student athletes?’” Drinkwitz said last weekend. “This stuff is not good for any student athlete. And it’s a direct reflection of our inability as leaders to come up with a plan.”
Drinkwitz has been pressing for the Protect College Sports Act, a bill in the Senate that would give the NCAA some protection against the sort of lawsuits that are upending college athletics. But the bill remains weeks away from a potential vote.
“If that if that bill has passed, this stuff is not happening right now,” he said, “because there’s a framework for what the future of college athletics looks like. And you know, (Texas A&M coach) Mike Elko said it a couple days ago, like, ‘The season’s kicked off, and we have no — we do not know what the rules are for eligibility.’ That’s embarrassing, man.”
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