NCAA files lawsuit against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine over state executive order on fifth-year players

In the most volatile era in college sports history, rife with landmark moments and first-of-its-kind events, the latest episode is one of the more groundbreaking yet.

The NCAA is suing a sitting state governor.

The association filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in an attempt to thwart the governor's executive order issued earlier this week that could pave the way for Ohio colleges to roster ineligible athletes.

The 41-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, viscerally attacks DeWine's executive order as a "misguided attempt" to give Ohio universities an "unfair, unprecedented and unwarranted competitive advantage." DeWine's missive directs in-state colleges to flout NCAA eligibility rules by ordering that schools permit Class of 2022 athletes a fifth season of eligibility.

DeWine is giving Ohio colleges "a hall pass to break the rules, in violation of multiple provisions of the United States Constitution as well as state law," the suit says.

The NCAA changed its eligibility standard this summer, moving to an age-based model that grants athletes five seasons of eligibility, not four as was the case under the previous rule. However, the association — a membership organization doing the bidding of the schools — did not apply the rule retroactively to the class of seniors who completed their fourth season this past spring. Many of those seniors, part of the 2022 signing class, have filed lawsuits to gain a fifth year.

The NCAA's lawsuit requests a judge declare DeWine's executive order as violating the U.S. constitution, rule that it has no "force of law," and prohibit the governor under federal and state law from any enforcement of the order.

"Using state law to undermine fair national competition threatens the viability of college sports and the basic lesson all athletes learn early in their careers — to play by the rules," the NCAA complaint reads.

The NCAA suing a sitting governor is believed to be a first in the organization's more than 100 years of history, yet another landmark moment in an industry wading through its most transformational era. Court rulings, some of them supported by member schools themselves, have reshaped long-time NCAA rules around athlete movement, compensation and, now, eligibility — in such a way that U.S. senators last month passed in one chamber of Congress a bill that intends to regulate college athletics.

The NCAA lawsuit comes at a remarkable time.

Two power conferences, in fact, recently filed lawsuits against their own member schools and one of those, in the SEC (against LSU), remains active . The league, much like the NCAA in the case against DeWine, is requesting a judge grant it authority to enforce its rules, which may include expelling LSU from the conference. A similar filing was made in June, when the Big 12's federal lawsuit against Texas Tech resulted in the end of the Red Raiders' plans to play quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who admitted to betting on his own team.

The governor's executive order on Tuesday came a week after an Ohio court of appeals reversed a decision to grant a fifth season of eligibility to a group of athletes in a lawsuit, Borovicanin v. NCAA.

Since June, roughly 330 players have received an additional year of eligibility in more than 150 lawsuits filed against the NCAA. About 300 more have been denied eligibility. Most of these athletes play men's basketball, but a handful are football players, swimmers, soccer players and from other non-revenue sports.

As with this suit, many of the NCAA's eligibility filings have been led by the Washington, D.C., firm Wilkinson Stekloff and lead counsel Rakesh Kilaru.

In the NCAA's complaint, the organization says the order's impacts will be most felt in other states at schools against which Ohio schools compete. The order gives a "competitive advantage" to all Ohio institutions as "they can roster experienced fifth-year seniors, in violation of the NCAA rules to which they agreed to be bound, and allow those individuals to compete against other schools who cannot roster such players under the bylaws."

"That will harm both student-athletes within Ohio — who are losing roster slots to ineligible athletes — and student-athletes outside Ohio — who face competitive disadvantages simply because they and their schools continue to follow the rules," the lawsuit reads.

The NCAA says the order is unlawful for three main reasons. The order (1) violates the Commerce Clause by prohibiting state action that burdens interstate commerce or regulates conduct beyond the state's borders. "A State may not enact laws that seek to reshape competition nationwide by conferring advantages on in-state institutions at the expense of out-of-state competitor; (2) undermines the NCAA's First Amendment rights to "purporting to provide Ohio institutions with legal cover to maintain their NCAA membership while simultaneously flouting the association's rules"; and (3) violates state law as the order is unlawful because DeWine lacks authority to order Ohio colleges and universities to roster ineligible athletes.