How many years is too many for NCAA athletes?

Except with a few minor exceptions it's over this year. All the covid exceptions will now be gone.

Is the NCAA a minor league or an association to organize and regulate sports for students? If the former, maybe until they're too old to play the sport. If the latter, 5 years makes sense - the traditional program of study takes 4 years but some students take a 5th year because they change majors and there is that opportunity to still give an athlete who gets a major injury 4 seasons.

The NCAA should have a flat rule:

Once you turn 24 years old, you're ineligible for NCAA sports.

There should never be an age requirement. Some foreigners don't really know when they were born. Athletes should have 4 years of eligibility to use forever. People woukd stop complaining about BYU or Covid if everyone could extend the 4 years.

In the major sports the NCAA is a minor league, and a very big-money league at that. The best thing they can do is make the product as high-quality as possible. They should get rid of academic and eligibility rules and focus on the game.

I think this is the best answer. You get 4 years, no red shirt, no nuthin'.. no exceptions for transfers, hardships, whatever.

In distance running, physical age matters very little by the time athletes are 20-21. It matters not at all to college enrollment.

For T&F and XC it should be:

4 years eligibility w a single redshirt year (not multiple sports spread among multiple years)

...All to be completed within 6 years of High School graduation. No 18 year old should be competing against 26 year olds in XC.

For hoops and football:

Doesn't matter, the best athletes move on before they complete their eligibility and no legitimate programs are seeking 23 year old freshman the way some running programs do.

So the person that maybe wasn't sure about school and decided to enter the workforce directly out of high school and doesn't start college until they're 21 becomes ineligible once they're 24? What about the person that joins the armed forces directly out of high school and then decides to go to college?

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This is another bad idea. In your line of thinking an athlete shows up in the fall and on the very first day of training has a season-ending injury. You're advocating that season should count against eligibility? How would you feel about this if it happened to you or one of your children?

Unrelated to the topic here but on the subject of getting hurt on the first day of training and ending the season or possibly even the collegiate career, that is why it is important that student-athletes select a school that they would want to attend even if not an athlete. More than once I've seen athletes that were injured and couldn't participate in athletics or lost interest and did not want to compete anymore and then decided that they really did not like the school and did not want to be there.

I also makes every regular senior that served a 2 year mission ineligible at some point in his senior year.

Life's hard and very often unfair. The problem begins when we start making exceptions and workarounds for everyone in the interest of fairness (which comes with very nebulous definitions).

We need to also remember what the fundamental purpose of college is. It is not to produce Olympic athletes or to help you get physically fit. Granted, football and basketball operate in a different universe than the other sports, but creating competitive opportunities and helping to pay for an education is not the primary mission of universities. No one is entitled to play sports at college. If college sports suddenly disappeared, would the need to obtain a degree suddenly vanish as well? Would campuses be empty?

Hard age limit of 24, full stop. If you chose service, faith, work, or do not have a reliable record of your birth, that should not matter to the NCAA. Sports are not a right nor are they an option for over 99% of students attending institutions of higher learning.

Agree. 24. Period. End of sentence. Good bye if you are >24.

So let's look at this from a different direction. Since you seem to think we shouldn't make exceptions in the interests of fairness... that what you said, right?

Since we now don't care about making it fair then let's let anyone who wants to stay in college compete for as long as they feel like .... 5-7- 10 years, who cares because we don't care about making it fair.

Or is it we just want to make rules to follow what you think is fair??

The current set up is fine. Now that covid exceptions are over, for the most part, everyone has 5 years to get in their 4 years of competition. Sure there are some exceptions due to going on a mission or getting a medical redshirt but it's hardly out of control.

I am advocating for a simple rule that eliminates the need for exemptions, exceptions, and loopholes. People make choices and those choices have consequences.

Personally, I would push to eliminate collegiate sports altogether. The big ball sports can spin off and function as self-sustaining professional minor leagues. Non-revenue sports should not be a drain on university budgets, costly to taxpayers, nor be funded on the backs of students borrowing money to cover various "fees". The rest of the world seems to be waxing our tails at nearly all non-American sports despite lacking big university athletic programs.

no legit programs? i routinely see >24 year old college football guys, often QBs, who were former minor league baseball players. weinke won the heisman for FSU age 28. JT Smith off the 4x100 relay worlds gold team was still competing for TAMU-Commerce through 23 (age 25) after graduating HS i think in like 16 or 17.

This is the problem. You have a personal agenda. The rules are fine the way they are. Go push your agenda somewhere else.

I don't think there's an inherent problem with what the rules are now. You still only get to PLAY/COMPETE in 4 seasons. COVID and some seasons 'not counting', like 2021 XC/Indoor really made that get weird...but those were incredibly rare circumstances. Outside of COVID, we very rarely see people compete past 5 years outside of the very few schools that are religiously affiliated and the students go on mission trips, which are not years where athletes are training/practicing with their team anyways. The system usually works well, and the COVID craziness will end after next year when the last class that got XC/Indoor eligibility finishes their 5th year. There will be a few 6th yr stragglers after that, but then it should reset itself.