Nyzier Fourqurean, the starting cornerback for the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s football team, was granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA for a possible fifth year of athletic eligibility. Although the NCAA has appealed the decision, this student-athlete victory—though potentially temporary—marks a significant challenge to the NCAA’s long-standing eligibility rules and highlights growing tensions between the NCAA’s governance model and the rights of student-athletes. Fourqurean’s case stems from the NCAA’s denial of an eligibility waiver request.
The lawsuit
Fourqurean played his first two years of football at the NCAA Division II level for Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in 2021 and 2022. Following the 2022 season at GVSU, Fourqurean transferred to Wisconsin and played in both the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Transferring to a Division I FBS university, Fourqurean’s NIL opportunities and earnings exploded, after he earned no NIL money at GVSU. In his pleadings, he stated that he expects the opportunity to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars during the 2025 football season if he is permitted to play. This argument is supported by an estimate from a sports marketing consultant, who estimates that he could earn somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000.
In accordance with NCAA bylaw 12.02.06, Fourqurean has used all four of his years of eligibility, even though two of those years were at the Division II level. Due to unique circumstances in Fourqurean’s life that occurred during the 2021 football season (while he played at GVSU), such as the death of his father and related mental health challenges, Wisconsin filed a waiver request asking the NCAA to grant Fourqurean a fifth year of eligibility.
Foururean’s waiver request
In its waiver request, Wisconsin argued that Fourqurean’s 2021 season should be treated as a redshirt year, even though he exceeded the three-game limit for Division II redshirts. Fourqurean played in 11 games in his first season at GVSU, while NCAA DII Bylaw 14.4 specifies that a year of eligibility will be used at the DII level if the player plays in three games or more.
The basis for the waiver request laid out circumstances beyond Fourqurean’s control, such as his missing of the 2021 fall football camp due to the death of his father, his mental state being unstable, and not being prepared for the 2021 season because he was grieving. Moreover, his coach at GVSU explained that he would not have played Fourqurean at all that season but was often forced to due to other teammates injuries. Further, despite playing in 11 games, he only totaled 155 snaps, which is roughly equivalent to the total number of snaps for three games. Notwithstanding these arguments, the NCAA denied the waiver request and Fourqurean promptly filed suit against the NCAA for violating §1 of the Sherman Act.
Claims
Fourqurean made two primary arguments in asking the court for relief. First, he argued that the NCAA’s rules limiting athletes to four years of eligibility during a five-year “eligibility clock” period lessened competition for roster spots, which, in turn, lessened competition for NIL earnings. Second, he argued that seasons competing at the Division II level should not count towards the four-year limit at all, pointing to the fact that NIL opportunities are comparatively almost non-existent at the Division II level.
The court’s ruling
Judge Conley of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin granted Fourqurean’s motion for preliminary injunction. However, he did not strike down the NCAA’s rule requiring athletes to use their four years of eligibility within five years entirely. Likewise, the judge did not hold that DII or DIII years of intercollegiate eligibility should not count towards the four-year limit. In fact, Conley specifically stated this would be inappropriate. Rather, the preliminary injunction granted is quite narrow in scope and particularly applies to the NCAA’s eligibility waiver process. The ruling instructs the NCAA that it needs to “adopt and apply meaningful exceptions to the Five-Year Rule… [that] account for competitor’s individual circumstances or provide a process that allows a student-athlete to initiate the waiver process himself.”
The Pavia decision
Shortly before the filing of Fourqurean’s complaint, another Division I football student-athlete, Diego Pavia, was granted a preliminary injunction for an extra year of eligibility. By contrast, Pavia challenged the NCAA’s four-year eligibility rule claiming that his junior college seasons should not count against him. The antitrust claim argued that the NCAA’s rule that junior college counts towards the four years of eligibility harms competition in the DI college football player market. While the decision and injunction are limited to Pavia, the NCAA has issued a “blanket waiver” granting an additional year of eligibility for the 2025-26 academic year to all student-athletes who were non-NCAA transfers. The NCAA did appeal the ruling, but a final decision is not expected until later this year.
Like Diego Pavia, Fourqurean argued that the eligibility clock should not start until enrolling at an NCAA Division I institution. While Fourqurean argued that distinguishing NJCAA or NAIA competition years from NCAA Division II or Division III competition years would surmount to a distinction without a difference, the court found the argument unpersuasive. Otherwise, the judge found that an adoption of such a rule—which hypothetically could permit college athletes to enjoy 12 total years of playing time across all three NCAA Divisions—would “all but end any distinction between college and professional football.” While this decision may appear at odds with the decision in the Pavia case, it is worth noting that the Fourqurean court is not bound by the decision of the Pavia court and may have come to a different holding if the Pavia case had been brought before it.
The NCAA’s appeal to the 7th Circuit
Since the landmark Supreme Court decision in Alston in 2021, where the Court ruled the NCAA’s restrictions on education-related benefits for college athletes violated antitrust law, opportunities for college athletes to earn NIL income and the trends of courts favoring student-athletes over the NCAA have soared. In a post-Alston world, it is no longer clear which NCAA rules will survive antitrust scrutiny. Certainly, however, the NCAA does not enjoy the presumption of validity of its inherently non-economic (e.g., eligibility rules) restrictions and deference to its rulemaking authority that it once did.
The NCAA has appealed the preliminary injunction in the Fourqurean case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The federal appellate court, which has tended to be a friendly forum for the NCAA in past antitrust cases (perhaps, in part, because the NCAA’s national office in Indianapolis is located within its appellate jurisdiction), will review the appeal with newly announced standards handed down by the Supreme Court in the Alston decision.
Since Judge Conley did not enjoin the NCAA from maintaining its Five-Year Rule generally but instructed the NCAA to create a more in-depth process for student-athletes to file eligibility waivers, the Seventh Circuit may affirm the decision. However, it is possible that the appellate court determines that the limited scope of the injunction is at odds with the Pavia decision, or that Judge Conley abused his discretion in his antitrust analysis.
What does this mean for other student-athletes who may have been denied an eligibility waiver?
The NCAA is unlikely to issue a “blanket waiver” for similarly situated student-athletes—like it did for junior college transfers in the wake of the Pavia injunction—as that would result in an extra year of eligibility for any athlete who had a denial of an eligibility waiver. The injunction specifies that the NCAA is not enjoined from maintaining its Five-Year Rule of eligibility, but rather narrowly enjoins it from applying the rule without a more meaningful examination of exceptions in the individual athlete’s life.
With that said, the NCAA has not yet come forward with a plan for how it may implement the waiver request process in the future, but it seems this could be a likely next step for the NCAA to avoid lawsuits from similarly situated athletes while the NCAA’s appeal is pending before the Seventh Circuit. Athletes that have been denied a waiver request by the NCAA should consider how the specific facts and circumstances of their career and waiver request might be analyzed by a court. Given the contemporary landscape, it is plausible that several arguments could be made in favor of a student-athlete having continuing eligibility.
The Fourqurean case marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing legal battles between student-athletes and the NCAA, highlighting the continuously shifting landscape of college athletics post-Alston. While the NCAA continues to defend its eligibility rules, recent legal trends suggest a growing challenge to its authority, especially regarding rules that could suppress NIL market value for collegiate athletes.
