Breaking Down the 5-for-5 Rule and Its Impact on College Athletics

In decades past, an NCAA athlete taking the field of play past the age of 22 was seen as an anomaly. Nowadays, many rosters across collegiate athletics have an average age higher than that, a phenomenon buoyed by the presence of redshirt seasons and COVID-era waivers that continue to make an impact five years later. Successful lawsuits filed by players with expiring eligibility have resulted in career-extending waivers, helping athletes suit up into their mid-20s.

The newly introduced 5-for-5 rule promises to put a stop to the longstanding headache caused by shifting, inconsistent eligibility rules, reshaping the NCAA's eligibility landscape. While not officially passed into law yet, the monumental change proposes to limit students to five years of play, eliminating the need for redshirts, lawsuits, and 28-year-old college athletes. This simple restructuring of eligibility, however, will have a substantial impact on roster construction across both football and basketball. In the NIL era, age-based eligibility will reorient how programs aim to recruit talent, both in the transfer portal and out, subsequently impacting how coaches choose to build their teams.

Age-Based Eligibility Explained

The 5-for-5 rule was introduced in an effort to provide uniformity to the inconsistencies of eligibility issues. If passed, all collegiate athletes would be allowed to play five seasons over five years. The clock would begin ticking on those years as soon as an athlete graduates high school or turns 19, whichever comes earlier. The need for redshirts would be eliminated, with all athletes automatically having an extra season of play added to their eligibility. Extended eligibility would only be granted in extreme cases, such as military service, religious missions, and pregnancy. Through a formalized rule, the NCAA also stands to gain the upper hand in legal cases like the one recently filed by Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss in pursuit of another year on campus.

Unfortunately, players who have used up their eligibility already would not qualify for a fifth season of play if age-based eligibility becomes the law of the land. Despite that single inequity, the 5-for-5 rule will help institute some consistency in an area of constantly shifting goalposts that has long given programs, coaches, and fans headaches.

What This Means For Underclassmen

Any major rule change is going to result in its winners and losers, and the early indication is that underclassmen are set to deal with the short end of the stick. Another year of eligibility granted, no questions asked, will obviously incentivize older athletes to stick around campus for another season, creating a similar situation to the logjam of upperclassmen that occurred after extra years of COVID eligibility were doled out.

Another factor that should lead to increased retention of upperclassmen is the newfound prevalence of NIL money. Sticking around for a fourth or fifth year used to cost athletes money. The opposite is often true nowadays. Plenty of seniors now have a significant financial incentive to remain on campus as long as they can, especially if they are not projected as highly-touted professional prospects in their respective sports. Plenty of Division I basketball rosters have average ages equivalent to NBA teams, and college football teams are trending in the same direction. Age-based eligibility, while eliminating extreme outliers, will allow players to seek to maximize their returns from their time on campus by playing out their five years. Ultimately, that will lead to diminished opportunities for freshmen and sophomores to find meaningful playing time.

The First Transfer Portal

Luckily, those underclassmen have plenty of options should they choose to seek immediate playing time. The most commonly utilized solution will, of course, be the transfer portal. 2025 saw 1,422 Division I basketball players enter the portal, while 2,776 football players also tried their luck. Official 2026 numbers are not yet available, but there will almost certainly be a substantial increase in transfers across both sports.

A large portion of the players in the transfer portal are young athletes hunting for opportunity. With so many prospective players and just over 5,500 roster spots available, even talented underclassmen are bound to be forced to the bench by overall roster depth in some situations.

The allure of transferring into instant playing time and a solid NIL check is often enough to draw young players away from blue-chip programs. Rising sophomores Acaden Lewis and Eric Reibe are excellent examples from the 2026 college basketball offseason. Both considered elite prospects, Lewis transferred away from Villanova to become Miami's starting point guard, while Reibe transferred from UConn to USC to start at center.

Lewis's AVI Index sits around $600,000, while Reibe's projects him to bring in just under $1 million, providing substantial financial incentive for their moves. More importantly, each will move from a crowded position group at their former school to a lion's share of the playing time, and subsequently, the exposure that comes along with being one of the team's best options.

Players like Lewis and Reibe form the first portal: a group of underclassmen seeking to increase their value through increased playing time and on-court contributions, even if it means moving to a less prestigious program. First portal players starkly differ in motivation and situation from those who will make up the other half of the same transfer portal if age-based eligibility is indeed passed into law.

The Second Portal: A Product of Age-Based Eligibility

The term "second portal" refers to an inevitable byproduct of the 5-for-5 rule. While a part of the same portal as the underclassmen referred to above, the market that will likely be created by older athletes represents a completely different set of circumstances from their peers in the first portal.

As previously mentioned, a combination of NIL money and a fifth year of eligibility will heavily incentivize upperclassmen to stay in college for every second of their five seasons of play. That change will have a significant impact on the economy of the transfer portal. For coaches, experienced, proven players will be plentiful in the portal, allowing programs to consistently recruit top-level talent in the same vein as free agency at the professional level.

Inklings of this practice were evident in college football's 2026 transfer window. Cornerback Jontez Williams started for three seasons for the Iowa Hawkeyes, providing steady play at one of football's most important positions. After an injury cut his junior year short, Williams received a redshirt and transferred to USC. His AVI index projects a payday just under $1 million for the move. Instead of sticking with one of the best defenses in college football, Williams moved to another team that has only marginally improved playoff chances, indicating that his choice was based on financial motives.

Perhaps an even better example is offensive tackle Jacarrius Peak. A three-year starter for NC State, Peak transferred to a mediocre South Carolina squad, a move that seems unlikely to have been motivated by winning. The big man's AVI Index rates even better than Williams' does, topping out at just under a $2 million projection.

In both cases, established upperclassmen with demonstrated value jumped ship from teams with which they had spent their entire college careers. Their moves were unlikely to be in pursuit of a deep postseason run, but instead were driven by substantial NIL value from transferring to another program. In this way, Williams and Peak encapsulate what the second portal will become: juniors, seniors, and fifth-years who have earned an enormous amount of money through their play, looking to cash in.

And cash in they will. Experience and reliability translate into huge jumps in athletes' AVI Index. A cornerback who has all the same measurements and social media followings as Williams, who also played a single season in the Big Ten, sees an AVI valuation of $390,000. Similarly, a tackle who just completed his first season of play, who is otherwise identical to Peak, sees his AVI value top out at $850,000. These numbers show that most of the athletes in the second portal will essentially be expensive plug-and-play starters, guys that coaches can be sure will provide a high floor. Meanwhile, players in the first portal will typically carry more question marks at a lower price tag.

Soon, the prevalence of fifth-year players will provide coaches with a huge pool of proven talent to help fill positions of need. That pool reduces the importance of recruiting players out of high school while reemphasizing the role of the transfer portal. Four and five-star recruits demand nearly as much NIL money as their older counterparts, but without the proven playing experience the latter provides. Programs aiming to get over a championship hump are better served by the athletes who will soon be ever-present as transfers. Moving forward, the most important parts of roster construction for teams chasing titles will come from the second portal.

The Changing Collegiate Landscape

With this potentially fundamental change to team-building and development could come a change in the product put out by collegiate athletics, particularly in basketball and football. As rosters continue to get older, games previously defined by their imperfection, heart, and grit will slowly begin to look more like their professional counterparts. College sports will lose some of their trademark craziness in exchange for a higher overall level of competition, altering a major draw for fans who prefer NCAA to professional sports.

A Double-Edged Sword

No rule change is without its detractors, but it is difficult to argue against the 5-for-5 rule. Getting rid of the nebulous systems surrounding waivers, redshirts, and other exemptions is a mutually beneficial move for both the NCAA and the players under its banner. Athletes who will not cut it in the professional ranks now have another year to make life-changing money on campus while helping teams improve their overall level of play. Age-based eligibility is a long-overdue clarification of rules that desperately needed it, one that ultimately benefits the vast majority of college athletes at the cost of some of the amateurism that endears college sports to so many.