Report: Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia aiming to end NCAA's JUCO eligibility rule with class action lawsuit

Eight months after winning a historic legal injunction against the NCAA that allowed him to play a sixth season of college football, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia is doubling down. According to Front Office Sports, Pavia and his legal team are preparing to file an amended complaint against the NCAA’s rule that counts junior college seasons against a player’s collegiate eligibility by making it a class-action suit.

Pavia’s legal team is set to add multiple new plaintiffs in its amended legal challenge. The list includes Commodores teammate Tre Richardson, Louisiana Tech‘s Andrew Burnette, Oklahoma State‘s Iman Oates and Virginia Tech‘s James Djonkam, in order to qualify it as a class-action lawsuit, according to FOS.

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Pavia was awarded an additional sixth season of college eligibility by the NCAA in December after U.S. District Court of Middle Tennessee judge William Campbell granted the Vanderbilt quarterback a preliminary injunction against the NCAA counting his junior college seasons by arguing the governing body’s redshirt rule violates antitrust law. Following the ruling, the NCAA issued a blanket waiver for 2025-26 that granted an extra year to athletes who previously “competed at a non-NCAA school for one or more years” and otherwise would have exhausted their NCAA eligibility following the 2024-25 season.

The amended complaint would seemingly make the same case on a much grander scale. If granted, Pavia’s amended complaint against the NCAA would seemingly set a new nationwide precedent and potentially permanently change how the NCAA qualifies junior college seasons as it counts against a student-athlete’s current four seasons of collegiate eligibility.

This follows a Sept. 16 hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in which Pavia’s attorneys threatened to stack a challenge to the redshirt rule and ask for another injunction that would allow Pavia to play again in 2026, according to sports law professor Sam Ehrlich.

“A big part of the hearing was about whether the NCAA’s appeal was moot, meaning that the appellate opinion wouldn’t actually affect anything and thus doesn’t really matter, because Pavia would still be able to play for 2025 based on the waiver, and the appeal is on an injunction based on that waiver,” Ehrlich told On3’s Pete Nakos. “Pavia’s attorney argued that the appellate decision is still relevant because if the court finds that the rules are commercial and thus subject to antitrust law, he’ll be filing for a new injunction or an expedited trial schedule at the district court seeking to play 2026 as well.

“It makes sense given that his attorney is also involved in the new class action lawsuit challenging the four seasons rule overall, and Pavia would be seeking — if you take the JUCO year out of the picture — his fifth season in five years.”

While Pavia has already announced his intentions to enter the 2026 NFL Draft after the current season, and thus has no intention to seek an additional seventh season of NCAA eligibility, his attorney, Ryan Downton, told FOS that the Vanderbilt QB wanted to remain part of the lawsuit in order to guarantee future athletes have the same opportunities he’s had since landing in Nashville.

— On3’s Pete Nakos contributed to this report.