NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with The Athletic’s Ralph Russo about professional football players leaving the NFL to play in the collegiate division.
Transcript
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
These days, many college football players leave school early to play in the NFL. One player is reversing that trend. Cleveland Browns’ tight end Dae’Quan Wright hasn’t played in a program yet, but he says he’s leaving the team to play for his old college coach, Lane Kiffin. That would make him the first NFL player to return to college competition. Ralph Russo, senior college sports writer for The Athletic, is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Ralph. Thanks for joining us.
RALPH RUSSO: Good morning. How are you?
MARTIN: Good. So how is it that a professional player like Dae’Quan Wright can return to playing college sports?
RUSSO: As with so many things in college sports these days, it all started with a lawsuit. He and about 30 other former college athletes sued the NCAA in a court in Louisiana over implementation of a new eligibility rule. The new rule allows for all athletes to have the opportunity to compete for five full seasons. Wright’s eligibility and others like him ended last school year and expired after only four full seasons under the old rule.
So a lot of athletes, Wright included, decided to sue to try to get an extra year from the NCAA, saying that you should’ve applied this to us. What makes Wright’s case and the case in Louisiana unique is it involved about a half dozen football – or, excuse me, about a dozen and a half football players, including a handful like him who had signed with NFL teams and taken part in at least a little bit of training camp this season.
MARTIN: But don’t the NCAA rules prohibit players from returning to college after signing pro contracts and having agents? I mean, like, I think, you know, we’re familiar with pro athletes when they retire. Sometimes they go back to school to finish their degree or something like that. But he’s still in his active playing year, so don’t the NCAA rules prohibit that?
RUSSO: They do. But the judges in a lot of these cases have said, no, they don’t anymore – right? – we’re throwing those rules out, or we’re setting them aside, or we’re giving you opportunities to pause those rules. And you can come back, even though you’ve signed a professional contract or signed with an agent, if you pay the money back. So that creates these unprecedented situations where, yeah, like, he hasn’t cleared waivers yet, and maybe he will be claimed by another NFL team, but the plan right now is for him to go to LSU and play football for Lane Kiffin this season.
MARTIN: And why does he want to?
RUSSO: Well, he is a former player of Kiffin. They were both at Ole Miss last year. But really, it’s about money, you know? College athletes get paid now. And you could knock around on an NFL practice squad and maybe make $100,000, or you could go to school and probably be guaranteed at least that much or more. And again, with a little more certainty. You’re not likely to get cut during the season. College teams don’t do that. So really, it comes down to this is a more lucrative deal than the NFL for a player like Wright.
MARTIN: Do you think this is kind of a one-off deal as all this – or a one-off, or kind of just a period in time as these NIL deals are still being sort of sorted out? Or do you think this is possibly the start of something?
RUSSO: There is a lot of disruption right now and uncertainty in college sports, with all the rules being tossed around. I would say that the concern is, while this case legally doesn’t set precedent, that the NCAA rules have just been chipped away to the point where I think there is concern that, what’s the next lawsuit going to bring? And does the next lawsuit open the door permanently to pro athletes returning to college? That’s not the case now. But I think there’s concern that going forward, it could be.
MARTIN: That’s Ralph Russo, the senior college sports writer for The Athletic. Ralph, thanks.
RUSSO: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLES BRADLEY AND THE MENAHAN STREET BAND SONG, “HOW LONG”)
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