Just when you thought college football could not get any weirder, an NFL player entered the transfer portal.
Read that again.
Not a former NFL player who went back to school five years later to finish a degree. Not a guy who declared for the draft, went undrafted and never signed a professional contract.
An actual player on an NFL roster.
Cleveland Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright entered the NCAA transfer portal Thursday after a Louisiana court issued a temporary restraining order that could allow certain players who signed professional contracts to return to college football for another season. Wright played at Virginia Tech and Ole Miss before signing with Cleveland as an undrafted free agent this spring.
Welcome back to the NCAA Wild West.
Only now, apparently, the trail runs from college to the NFL and then potentially right back to college again.
This is where I should probably say I support players having reasonable rights and opportunities, because I do. The NCAA spent decades operating with rules that often made very little sense, then acted surprised when judges started dismantling them piece by piece.
But there also has to be a point where somebody looks around and says, “Guys, what exactly are we doing here?”
Because allowing a player to go through the NFL Draft process, sign an NFL contract, participate in training camp, potentially play in preseason games and then return to major college football if the NFL thing does not work out is a pretty substantial departure from anything resembling the traditional definition of college athletics.
And that is exactly what is now on the table.
How We Got Here
The latest madness actually starts with a different court case.
On July 31, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado granted a preliminary injunction covering Division I athletes from the high school class of 2022 who had exhausted four seasons of eligibility. The dispute arose after the NCAA adopted a new “five for five” eligibility system but did not extend that benefit backward to the 2022 class. Sweeney’s ruling potentially opened another year of eligibility to hundreds of athletes who had played four consecutive seasons.
Initially, that ruling looked even crazier because it appeared it might include players who had already signed NFL contracts.
Sweeney quickly clarified that it did not.
Her August 2 clarification specifically said the ruling did not wipe away other NCAA eligibility rules, including the prohibition against signing a professional contract and then returning to college. So if you went through an NFL rookie minicamp without signing, you might still have a path back. If you signed an NFL deal, the door remained closed.
For about two weeks.
Because college football apparently looked at that small amount of legal clarity and decided it was unacceptable.
A group of 33 athletes then sued the NCAA in Louisiana state court. Sixteen of those plaintiffs are football players, and the group includes players who had signed NFL contracts. A temporary restraining order issued Wednesday prevents the NCAA, for now, from enforcing the professional-contract restrictions against those plaintiffs and also opened a one-week transfer portal window for them. A fuller injunction hearing is scheduled for August 31.
That distinction matters.
This is not yet some nationwide rule declaring that every NFL camp body can return to Alabama if he gets cut.
It is a temporary court order involving specific plaintiffs.
For now.
And “for now” is doing a lot of work in college sports these days.
We Already Have NFL Players Looking at the Exit Ramp
Wright is the most eye-opening example because he entered the transfer portal while still with Cleveland.
But he is not alone in this legal fight.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers edge rusher Jack Pyburn, Arizona Cardinals safety Wydett Williams Jr. and Seattle Seahawks running back Anthony Hankerson are among the professional players tied to the Louisiana case. Pyburn has already played in the NFL preseason and received guaranteed money on his contract.
Then there is T.J. Harden, who played at UCLA and SMU before signing in the NFL. Harden signed with Cleveland, later landed with Seattle and was waived by the Seahawks on August 17. Two days later, he was headed toward the college transfer portal under the Louisiana ruling.
By Thursday afternoon, eight football players from the Louisiana case had entered the portal: Harden, Wright, Weylin Lapuaho, Zxavian Harris, Trent Hendrick, Ethan Johnson, Blake Cotton and Luke Drzewiecki.
That escalated quickly.
A month ago we were arguing about whether college players should get a fifth year.
Now we are discussing whether a guy should finish NFL training camp before deciding whether he wants to enroll somewhere and play on Saturday instead.
Totally normal stuff.
So How Many Players Could This Actually Affect?
Right now, the direct answer is limited.
The Louisiana order covers 33 plaintiffs across multiple sports, including 16 football players. It does not automatically make every former college player currently bouncing around an NFL camp eligible to return.
But that is probably not the question that should make college coaches nervous.
The question is what happens if these players ultimately win.
The Colorado case potentially affected hundreds of Division I athletes from the 2022 high school class who exhausted four seasons without redshirting. That ruling excluded players who signed professional contracts only after the judge clarified it. The Louisiana case is now attacking that exact restriction.
If the professional-contract prohibition gets knocked down more broadly, how many other 2026 NFL rookies from that class suddenly decide another year of college football sounds pretty good?
Especially after roster cuts?
Remember, plenty of undrafted rookies and late-round players are fighting for NFL practice-squad jobs where their financial future is hardly guaranteed. Meanwhile, NIL and revenue-sharing money at major college programs can be substantial.
For some players, returning to a Power Four school might actually become the safer financial decision.
That is where this gets very interesting.
It is also where the floodgates could open.
One college staffer described the situation to CBS Sports with exactly that phrase: “Open the floodgates.”
Hard to argue.
And What Happens to the Kid Already on the Roster?
This might be the messiest part of all.
Major Division I football programs operating under the House settlement are subject to a 105-player roster limit. That is not a suggestion. It is the roster cap established under NCAA Bylaw 17.2.
So imagine you are player No. 104 or 105 on a roster right now.
You reported to camp.
You went through summer workouts.
You survived spring practice.
You thought you had made the team.
Then an NFL-caliber defensive lineman gets released during NFL roster cuts and calls your coach Monday morning because a judge says he can come back to college.
Guess who suddenly has a problem?
You do.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart already raised the practical issue after the Colorado ruling because Georgia was sitting around the 105-player limit. Programs are not required to add these newly eligible players, and many have already built their rosters. But if an impact player suddenly becomes available, coaches are going to have decisions to make.
And let’s not pretend we do not know how those decisions work.
If you are the 104th best player on the roster and a guy who was good enough to spend August in an NFL facility suddenly becomes available, somebody may have to make room.
Maybe a school happens to have an open spot.
Maybe there is an injury.
Maybe someone voluntarily leaves.
But if the roster is full, math remains undefeated.
Add one.
Remove one.
That means a college player who did absolutely nothing wrong could conceivably lose his roster spot because somebody else tried the NFL, did not make it and received a late legal pathway back to college.
That is where the “player empowerment” discussion gets a little more complicated.
Which player are we empowering?
The NFL player coming back?
Or the 19-year-old sophomore whose locker he might be taking?
This Is Why College Football Needs Actual Rules Again
There is a legitimate fairness argument behind the lawsuits.
The NCAA changed its eligibility structure and created a strange cutoff that left athletes from the 2022 class in a different position than athletes coming behind them. Courts have repeatedly been asked to sort out NCAA eligibility rules because the organization has done such a poor job creating rules that can survive legal scrutiny.
That is on the NCAA.
But fixing one unfair situation by creating three new absurd ones is not exactly progress.
College football cannot function long-term with eligibility being decided one temporary restraining order at a time.
Coaches need to know who is eligible.
Players need to know whether they actually have roster spots.
Recruits need to know whether the scholarship and opportunity they were promised still exist.
NFL teams probably would not mind knowing whether the undrafted free agent they are evaluating plans on remaining a professional football player next week.
And fans would presumably like to know whether “declaring for the NFL Draft” still means anything.
There should be a clean line somewhere.
Maybe entering the draft does not have to end eligibility.
Maybe attending rookie minicamp does not have to end eligibility.
Those are debates worth having.
But once you sign a professional contract and start playing professional football?
It seems fairly reasonable to say college football is behind you.
Otherwise, where does this end?
A rookie gets cut after Week 3 and transfers to Texas?
A practice-squad player gets released in October and becomes somebody’s answer at linebacker before the playoff push?
Obviously the current orders do not permit all of that. There are enrollment deadlines, transfer rules, conference restrictions and the specific scope of these court cases.
But five years ago, the idea of an active NFL player entering the NCAA transfer portal would have sounded like a joke too.
Now Dae’Quan Wright has done it.
That is the problem with the current system.
Every time you think we have reached the edge of absurdity, somebody moves the fence another hundred yards.
Players deserve fair rules.
Schools deserve predictable rules.
And the NCAA desperately needs rules that courts will actually allow it to enforce.
Because going from college football to an NFL tryout and then back into the transfer portal might be entertaining chaos for us to talk about.
It is a terrible way to run a sport.