Badger declares for the draft

Wasn't he out of eligibility anyway?

 

All these guys with no eligibility declaring for the draft is this year's new thing.

 

I really wish he had another year, I loved watching him play, he’s a baller.

 

More clicks and free circulation for useless info. Hooray!

 

I could be wrong, but I think some of these guys could still technically claim the covid year and could play another as a grad transfer.

 

This one certainly couldn't. This would be the fifth year for anyone who played during 2020. The only ones that may have an extra year would be someone who was a freshman in 2020, played in 2020, but took a redshirt during another year. Or someone getting a medical rs.

 

Unless Badger and Dike manage to channel their inner Cam
Rising, they are both out of eligibility.

 

Rising has played two full years. Badger played four full years since 2020, and Dike played 5 full years including 2020. I'm counting full years as four games or more as that is the threshold for a RS. I personally think they've all been in college long enough and it's time for them to move on, but their careers and eligibility are not really comparable.

 

In the "old days" when the NCAA had rules that they could actually enforce, an athlete had 5 years after he graduated from high school to play 4 years of eligibility. After you were 5 years out, your eligibility was over, regardless of how many years you had actually competed.

The exceptions to this rule were military service or church missions. Those years didn't count. There were also medical hardship exceptions, but you had to make a special petition to the NCAA and they were rarely approved. The athlete would have to submit x-rays and medical records to the NCAA doctors for review, and things like "sore hamstring" or "back spasms" were rejected. It had to be a truly unusual injury requiring more than one year to heal to be approved.

So the Cam Risings of the world, today still eligible 7 years out of high school, would have been out of luck. Whether the old system was better than what we have now is a matter of opinion.

 

One caveat about that is that your "clock" had to be started by entering a college. Those individuals that went directly to the military or to another pro league (baseball) without entering any college, still had 5 years to play 4 when they finally did begin college. Chris Weinke fell into that category.