Excerpt from a long-running, popular LSU blog that covers LSU sports. Re: his take.....I guess so, but the guy is a relentless optimist, and I don't share any of his notion that this will be a one-time thing or stop here.
"Personally, I believe that in the future — next year and beyond — there should never be an instance when a professional player should be able to return to a college team. There should be a hard red line against such a move, respected by the players, coaches, the games’ governing authorities and the courts.
But here’s why this year in particular is a lot less cut and dry:
The NCAA’s new “5-for-5” age-based eligibility model, unanimously approved in late June, states that players have five years to play as many collegiate seasons as they can within that timeframe. I’m all for that. It’s simple, straightforward and fair. In that scenario, players from the 2022 signing class are eligible to play from 2022-2026.
The problem is that this new rule became official long after many players from the 2022 class — like Wright and Harris — made the decision to take a chance in the NFL. Their argument is that had they known they would be eligible for another collegiate season, they would have taken it, and that it’s not fair that others in their class will get to enjoy that extra year of eligibility while they don’t, simply because of when they happened to make their career decisions.
I understand the argument. It’s not their fault that the rules changed after they’d already made their choices. These players signed professional contracts because, under the rules that existed at the time, their college careers were already over — there was no remaining eligibility to protect or give up.
Still, that doesn’t change how I feel about where this should all end up. I get it, and I even have some sympathy for the players caught in the middle of a rule change they had no control over, but I hope we never see anything like this in future seasons. There was a time when the line between amateur and professional sports was clear: you turned pro, and that was that, no looking back. That’s an extremely important line that I hate to see blurred even more. Here’s hoping this ends up being a strange, one-time footnote in the sport’s history rather than the new normal.
It should also be noted that in the case of Wright and Harris, who both played at Ole Miss, there’s another angle to consider. Regardless of the TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) granting them another year of eligibility, there’s an SEC rule that only allows players to transfer within the conference and be immediately eligible if they do so during the standard winter portal window. In yesterday’s press conference, Kiffin was asked why he thinks bringing in Wright wouldn’t run counter to that rule, he said he couldn’t get into any specifics regarding players because they are recruits."
