How many years is too many for NCAA athletes?

I’m going the other direction, there shouldn’t be any time limits on eligibility. If you are attending a college you should be able to represent them in a sport. The whole 4-5 year cut off is completely superficial and unnecessary. In a sport where world record holders and world champions have been 18-21 years old it just doesn’t matter.

IMO there shouldn't be any season limits at all. As long as the athlete is taking a full credit load and is in good academic standing he should still be able to play college sports even if he is a 35 year old phD student.

How ironic, you said not to worry about fairness, then what is your gripe is people attend at any age for any time (assuming that is unfair)!

You forgot to use the word "clown" in your rant!

You did get "grandpa" and "little" in there though.

This is true. Maybe the limits should be how many years you can compete 4 times.

In other words, if you start as an 18 year old Freshmen and red shirt you can be on the roster a total of 5 years.

I had a friend who never went to college until he was in his late 20's- he competed 4 years at a D3 school into his 30's. He had a great experience and it launched a great running career.

Countries are good at sports they care about? Color me shocked.

NCAA sports are going nowhere. College football wouldn't work as a minor league. No one care or watches the XFL or CFL and college football fans are the most rabid in the country. There would be literal deaths and riots.

A google search suggests that the CFL brings in about 200-240 million in revenue per year. Just Alabama football brings in 130 million. There's no scenario where your model is viable.

Football is a very expensive sport- imagine the cost of transporting and housing all of those players, coaches and equipment for schools that aren't pulling in TV money.

The 100 or so people who watch a Cornell or Colgate or (insert name of podunk football college) aren't making any money.

A minor league in football would somehow have to turn a profit to exist.

That's not going to happen.

Baseball's minor leagues are struggling. My town has an AA team that is at the top of the league in attendance and it's a year to year struggle to keep the affiliation. And that's putting some people on buses staying on flea bag motels.

I would like to see all college sports go the D3 route- no athletic scholarships- give them money based on school performance and if they play a sport that gives them an advantage getting money over a non-athlete student of the same academic level.

My daughter got a partial athletic scholarship to a D1 school and my son (not an athlete) the same amount of money for his academics.

My daughter could have gone D3 but the problem was, they couldn't tell her how much money she was getting until after she applied and was accepted. The D1 schools called with their offers and she made the choice- she applied to and was accepted by one school.

I had an older guy on my team when I was in college. He was an international runner and was around 25 or 26 when he finished. His main events were middle distance type stuff, mainly the 1500. He did not train that hard but had been running since he was like 10. I had no problem beating him during track, his age advantage and lifetime miles did not seem to help in the 800 or 1500, but during XC and when we ran longer races (3k-10k) I was nowhere near him. I could never understand this since I ran much more than he did, in the end I just chalked it up to the fact that some people are just better at long distance and some people are better at mid distance (even though during track he was a mid-distance guy too) I am now the same age as he was when he was running with me in college and I really see how much age and life time miles help in the long distance events. I train considerably less then when I did in college, I could not touch my 800 and mile prs right now, but I am running so much faster in the 5k. Lifetime miles matter a lot as the distance gets further. If I trained like how I do now in college I would not come close to the times I am running because I did not have the miles under my legs.

100%

if the argument is -- say -- you believe african athletes are older than they look, which you believe explains their success, which you believe makes it unfair, you want to count up how many assumption layers in that logic chain? and not unlike the anti-trans folks we hear all about the outlier one in first place but not the majority back of the pack, just happy to be included. so, what about the facts? because a lot of the older athletes i competed against or know, had gotten out of shape, grown rust, lost a step.

nor have you explained why "24," and not 22 or 23 or 25 or 30 or never. i get the idea it reflects something like many people take 6 years to do a 4 year program, or the BYU missionaries being gone 2 years, or some such. in which case, hmmm, you have effectively begun acknowledging the exceptions make some sense just without admitting it. otherwise, why not 22 or your 4th year after HS graduation. no, you've fudged it a little and that fudge nods to at least some exceptions. if you're gonna fudge your end date then many of us would say fudge the start date and move the end date to suit the start date. harrumph.

to me, deal with actual problems as opposed to theoretical ones. i don't see cordell tinch or JT Smith as a bad thing. if i was concerned about it, 2 guys like that isn't an avalanche to deal with. kind of like lia thomas. it is an awkward issue they need to sort eventually, however, contrary to suggestion, there's 1 person in 1 event winning 1 medal, out of 3 levels, the list of events, times 3 podium spots. in that big picture move on to real problems. NCAA is not being overrun by secret 30 year old kenyans. even if we were in the neighborhood of an issue, to me, given the potential money to be made as a professional, i kind of respect a 25 year old start or staying in school, if they are that good, which IMO they often weren't. my experience generally the kids were the ones who showed up fit and sharp, and weren't frazzled from years of a desk job or whatnot.

the "accumulated miles" thing to me sounds like a spurious assumption. most people i knew who took time off before going to school ended up living at home, sacking groceries, working for dad landscaping. they were not training like professionals or even collegians. you're kind of like assuming they trained super serious "for college" but then held off until age 25 to show up and show it off. this doesn't exist. someone training that hard for TF/XC would manifest someplace. show up at a national meet. show up running unattached. have history in their home country. to me it's more likely, occam's razor, that some kenyan who showed not just good but great talent, didn't pursue school, kept training into young adulthood, and put up fast times.....would be directed towards professionalism rather than go run NCAA.

no, my personal experience with older athletes, in, say, soccer, was they were in the military or full time job, maybe occasionally play pickup, maybe or maybe not in a regular adult league, which often didn't have practices between games, out of shape, rusty. bit players, backups, subs when you stick them in with kids who went straight to college from playing soccer year round in organized leagues with full training and fitness. nor do i believe there is some telling physical change from 18 to 25. as i said, the real age mismatch is back when you enter HS at 14 and have to handle an 18 year old on the field. now there i needed to drop about 7 seconds from my district-title mile relay split in junior high to make a JV open quarter podium where i live, much less score points varsity. that's an actual mismatch caused by age.

All you little byu clown college apologists. There, fixed it.

They should allow ANY Student taking 12 Units to try out for the Team, regardless of how many years they are there. Make each student feel a part of the University, most will still try to get out of college and move on in 1 (Example Star Basketball andTrack Athletes)-5 years. but an extremely few might want to be on College Sports Teams for 20 Years, Like for example if there was no Professional Running a Eliud Kipchoge could compete for a College team from age 18 to probably well over 40 years of age. The KEY is They are Students First, so if a Person wants to go back and take A Math Class at age 70 they are allowed, so why not give each Student the right to TRY OUT for the Team at any College Where they are taking 12 Units? Very few would be able to still Make the College Teams for 10-15 years as it is a grind that wears you down, Injuries, need of making Money, moving on with life will prevent etc will make College Sports undoable for much more than 4-5 years, but TRYING OUT for the Team should be an option for ALL Students who are full time.

Is this "some people don't know when they were born" true? I suspect cases like these - where there is a conflict wrt ages, say Kipchoge or Kiptum - are what we would rudely call 'fraud' or more generously 'rule-bending' rather than ignorance. They and a tonne of other people know exactly how old they in literal DD/MM/YYYY.

Perhaps I've travelled too much to allow the sense of a broadly culturally-differentiated world that survives here. The world, it seems to me, is a lot flatter, far more similar than that.

Slap the same logo on the helmet, play at the same stadium, only the players get paid and it's no longer governed by the NCAA-a pro team with a naming rights deal with the University.

People will still go in great numbers.

Lifetime miles are not physical age. Look at the age grading adjustments for 20-21 year olds, even for 5K-10K. They're minimal.

And in any case, if someone wants to set up a system of age-group championships limited to particular ages, great! That would be interesting. But the NCAA is an association of colleges that enroll students of all ages, and I don't see why some students should be excluded from participating based on age restrictions that have nothing to do with college enrollment.

The US HS classes of 2019, 2020, and 2021 are the real losers in this whole NCAA COVID eligibility situation. In the alleged interest of fairness, they received the opposite.

USING TRACK SEASONS ONLY:

**BIGGEST LOSER - HS Class of 2020: (1) likely cancelled HS senior track season - screwed; (2) will spend their ENTIRE 5 years/4 seasons of eligibility competing against a more talented/deeper "pool" of athletes due to the "pool" containing 5-6 high school graduating classes to draw from instead of the traditional 4-5; (3) No COVID waiver for spring 2020 as they were only in HS.

**BIG LOSER - HS Class of 2019 will also spend their ENTIRE eligibility competing against a more talented/deeper "pool" of athletes due to the "pool" containing 5-6 high school graduating classes to draw from instead of the traditional 4-5. However, they are 1-year older than the HS Class of 2020 and they get the spring 2020 COVID waiver giving them a 6th year, so that helps. And, they were not screwed out of their HS senior track season like the Class of 2020.

**LOSER - HS Class of 2021's 1st through 4th years will have "pool" containing 5-6 high school graduating classes to draw from. 5th year will be back to normal at the traditional 4-5 high school graduating classes to draw from. Maybe screwed out of their Senior Year XC season and maybe track in a select few states?

Honorable Mention Losers:

HS Class of 2022's 1st through 3rd years will have "pool" containing 5-6 high school graduating classes to draw from. 4th and 5th years will be back to normal at the traditional 4-5 high school graduating classes to draw from.

HS Class of 2023's 1st and 2nd years will have "pool" containing 5-6 high school graduating classes to draw from. 3rd through 5th years will be back to normal at the traditional 4-5 high school graduating classes to draw from.

HS Class of 2024's 1st year will have "pool" containing 5-6 high school graduating classes to draw from. 2nd through 5th years will be back to normal at the traditional 4-5 high school graduating classes to draw from.

HS Class of 2025 will be back to normal at the traditional 4-5 high school graduating classes to draw from. Unless we have another NCAA fairness waiver issue.

The "pool" of athletes will not return to the traditional 4-5 high school graduating classes until the 2026 NCAA Track Championships.