5 in 5: The Rule Change That Just Flipped College Sports Upside Down 🌊

By MamaHen ❤️ • For every parent riding this recruiting rollercoaster with me

Hey now, it’s your MamaHen ❤️ — your D1 college football coach’s wife and mama to two amazing D1 football and basketball players. Pour your coffee, sit down for a minute, because I need to talk to you parents about something big. Real big.

Times are changing, y’all. And if you’ve got a young athlete in your house, this one lands right on your doorstep. Let’s dive into it.

First things first: what in the world is "5 in 5"?

Write this down on the fridge:5 seasons in 5 years. That’s the new deal. The NCAA passed a brand new eligibility rule — they like to call it "age-based eligibility," but us regular folks call it five-for-five — and it officially kicked in on August 1st.

Here’s the plain-English version. Your athlete’s clock starts ticking either when they enroll in college full-time, or the school year after their 19th birthday, whichever comes first. From there, they get five years to play five seasons. No more of the old "four seasons squeezed into five years" math we all got confused by. Simpler on paper — but honey, the road to get here has been anything but simple.

Why so many families felt robbed

Now here’s where mama’s heart got heavy. When they wrote this new rule, they left a whole group of kids out in the cold — the ones who started college back in 2022 and already used up their four seasons by this past spring.

Think about it. Those 2022 and 2023 kids spent their entire college careers lining up against fifth- and sixth-year players who got extra time from the COVID waivers. They competed against grown men who got bonus seasons — and then got told, "Sorry baby, no fifth year for you." That’s not right, and those families knew it. I knew it too.

And then they got together and WON 🏆

This is the part that gave me chills. All these young people got together and filed a class action lawsuit against the NCAA. The lead case is called Wisne v. NCAA, out of a federal court in Colorado.

On July 31st, the judge did two powerful things. She pulled all these athletes together into one big nationwide group, and then she issued an order telling the NCAA it can NOT block that 2022 class from playing a fifth season. In plain talk: for right now, the door swung wide open. And when a door like that opens, rosters everywhere start shaking.

Do you hear me? It is about to be chaos — the good kind and the messy kind all at once.

The transfer window — and why you cannot blink

Because rosters are blowing up overnight, a special short transfer portal window opened right behind that ruling — we’re talking a tiny stretch in early August, roughly August 3rd through the 10th. Short. Tight. Blink and it’s gone.

So if your athlete might qualify for this extra year, this is a "move today, not next week" situation. But hear me clearly, because the fine print matters:

• There’s an age cap. Once a player is over 24, that’s the end of the road — the extra year does not apply.

• The NCAA can still enforce its transfer rules. Translation: your athlete has to actually be IN the portal during the window. Sitting on the couch hoping does not count.

• And this is not fully settled. The NCAA has already filed an appeal and is calling the ruling flat-out wrong. So the rug could shift again.

That last one is why I always tell my parents the same thing: do not make a single move off a headline or off MamaHen’s live. Call your athlete’s compliance office and get their status in writing before anybody enters a portal or signs a thing.

"Can my NFL kid come home?" — the buzz nobody saw coming 🏈

Ok, here’s the wild one, and the arguments are running all the way wild on this. Some folks are asking: if you’re a free agent who never stuck in the league, and you’re still inside that eligibility window and under that age cap — could you come back home to campus?

I’m not going to sit here and promise you that, because the lawyers are still fussing over exactly who counts. But the very fact that we are even asking the question tells you how big this shift really is. A door that used to be locked shut is at least cracked open.

What this really means for YOUR athlete 🏹

Let me bring it home, mama to mama, dad to dad. Whether your baby is a senior in high school, already on a college roster, or somewhere in between, this touches you. When older players win back a year, they take up roster spots — and that changes the math for everybody coming up behind them.

So here’s your MamaHen game plan:

• Know your athlete’s exact eligibility status. Not what you think — what compliance confirms in writing.

• Watch those roster numbers. If veterans are coming back, ask honest questions about playing time and scholarship room.

• Move inside the window, not after it. These portal windows are short on purpose.

• Stay calm, stay informed. Panic makes bad decisions. A plan makes good ones.

5 in 5, y’all. It is a true game changer, and we are watching it happen in real time. I’ll keep breaking it down for you plain and simple, the way we do.

I’m MamaHen ❤️— tune in to my LIVES and follow along as we talk through these hot topics in sports and recruiting together. We’re in this thing as a family. Bye now! 👋