College football’s eligibility carousel added another rider Friday, and this one rolls in from the Forty Acres.
Former Texas offensive lineman Cole Hutson filed an age-based eligibility lawsuit against the NCAA in Travis County, Texas, seeking a temporary injunction that would allow him to play a fifth season in 2026-27. The suit, first reported by On3’s Pete Nakos, challenges the NCAA’s Seasons of Competition Rule — Bylaw 12.6 — as applied to Hutson in light of the organization’s recent shift to a five-for-five model that grants five years of competition to athletes from the 2023 recruiting class onward.
Hutson, a member of the 2022 class, missed that cutoff by one year.
Filed by Collin County attorney David Obard, the lawsuit argues the NCAA’s “arbitrary application” of the bylaw “unfairly limits the number of games he can participate in during his five-year eligibility window, restrains his ability to further develop, restrains his ability to earn scholarship money as a student athlete in pursuit of his Master’s Degree, and restrains his ability to earn money through the use of his name, image, and likeness.”
The 6-foot-5, 308-pounder from Frisco signed with Texas as a consensus four-star prospect — No. 362 nationally, No. 13 among interior offensive linemen in the 2022 cycle. He started all 13 games at right guard as a true freshman, then slid into a reserve role for two seasons. In 2025, he opened the year as the starting center before missing three games to injury. He returned to start the final five games at left guard after classmate Connor Robertson took over the pivot. All told: 48 appearances, 23 starts, and a Joe Moore Award semifinalist offensive line he helped anchor.
Then the 2026 NFL Draft came and went without his name called. He earned a Cowboys rookie minicamp invite but no contract.
Now he wants back in burnt orange, and the legal tailwinds are favorable. Last week, an Ohio federal judge granted a preliminary injunction for 24 men’s and women’s college basketball players who brought a similar challenge to the NCAA’s age-based eligibility model. That ruling has opened the floodgates. Hutson joins former Texas basketball players Jordan Pope and Chendall Weaver in seeking a fifth season, and the queue is only growing.
The NCAA’s new age-based model starts an athlete’s eligibility clock at initial full-time college enrollment or the beginning of the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever comes first. Implementation begins this summer, with recruits starting in 2027 falling under age-based rules exclusively. But for players like Hutson — caught between the old five-year window and the new five-for-five system — the gap is the lawsuit.
If the injunction is granted, Hutson would likely compete for Texas’s open starting left guard spot, where Andre Cojoe and Western Kentucky transfer Laurence Seymore are currently the leading contenders. With scholarship expansion taking effect this year, the Longhorns have the roster space.
Translation: this isn’t a symbolic filing. There’s a real position battle waiting if the judge signs off, and Hutson has 23 starts of tape that say he belongs in it.
The NCAA has not publicly commented on the suit.
Sources
- Pete Nakos / On3 (X)
- Yahoo Sports — Former Texas OL Cole Hutson files age-based eligibility model
- Yahoo Sports — Cole Hutson sues NCAA for extra year of eligibility