By Sean Labar
Vanderbilt Commodores QB Diego Pavia has put together an impressive season and led his team to some huge wins, including a massive upset over Alabama.
Pavia threw for 252 yards and rushed for another 56, while throwing for two touchdowns in Vanderbilts stunning upset over the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide back on Oct. 5. It marked the first time Vanderbilt beat an AP top five team in program history. Until then, the Commodores were (0-60) against teams ranked within the top five.
The Vanderbilt QB has been the catalyst behind Vanderbilt putting together one of the best seasons in recent history.
With four games remaining in the 2024 college football regular season, Vanderbilt is currently ranked No. 24 in the AP Poll, with key wins over Virginia Tech, Alabama, Kentucky and Auburn and just a three-point loss to Texas, one of the top teams in the country right now.
Pavia has played within the Vanderbilt offense, which doesn’t ask him to do it all, but he’s thrived in multiple big moments this season.
But in a wild twist of events, the news broke on Friday night that Pavia — who transferred to Vanderbilt ahead of the 2024 season after spending two seasons at New Mexico State — is suing the NCAA.
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Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia suing NCAA over eligibility and NIL: Is he the new Ed O’Bannon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK5z-_knBU8
According to ON3 and multiple media outlets, Pavia filed a lawsuit on Friday against the NCAA, arguing that because college football’s governing body counts junior college seasons towards NCAA eligibility and athletes cannot redshirt after redshirt after they have played four years, NCAA rules violate antitrust law.
The former New Mexico State transfer goes on to argue that the rules have forced athletes to miss out on NIL dollars.
Filed in U.S. District Court of Middle Tennessee, Pavia is seeking a temporary restraining order against the NCAA, which is preventing him from playing the 2025-26 season based on his attendance at junior college during the 2020 and 2021 seasons.
“Athletes playing football outside of the NCAA monopoly have no meaningful opportunity to profit off their name, image, or likeness,” the complaint states. “Even so, JUCO Eligibility Limitation Bylaws restrict the ability of athletes who begin their college football careers in junior colleges from having the same opportunity to profit from NIL as students who enter an NCAA institution as freshmen.”
“Specifically, the JUCO Eligibility Bylaws limit athletes who begin their college careers at junior colleges to only two or three seasons of NCAA Division I football, as opposed to the four seasons of competition (and NIL Compensation opportunities) available to all other NCAA Division I football players.”
The complaint included a declaration of support from Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea.
In the new Wild West that is modern college football, it’s hard to tell if Pavia has a strong case. It sure sounds like it, but he’s dealing with the NCAA after all, so he’s going to need a court to agree with his claims against one of the worst governing bodies in all of sports.
This whole thing has shades of Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit back in 2011, when the former UCLA basketball star became the first college athlete to argue student athletes should be compensated for their name, image and likeness.
O’Bannon was the lead plaintiff in O’Bannon v. NCAA, an antitrust class action lawsuit filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) on behalf of its Division I football and men’s basketball players over the organization’s use for commercial purposes of the images of its former student athletes. The suit argued that upon graduation, a former student athlete should become entitled to financial compensation for future commercial uses of his or her image by the NCAA. In January 2011, Oscar Robertson, considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, joined O’Bannon in the class action suit. On August 8, 2014, Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the NCAA’s long-held practice of barring payments to athletes violated anti-trust laws.
We will see if Diego Pavia has the same success that Ed O’Bannon did.
