U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney late Monday denied the NCAA’s motion to stay her nationwide injunction permitting thousands of Division I college athletes who began college play in 2022–2023 and completed four years of eligibility by this past spring to play another season.

Sweeney reasoned the NCAA “essentially rehashes arguments that it previously made and that [she] rejected” in hopes the injunction would be put on hold while the NCAA appeals Sweeney’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

The ruling isn’t a surprise, since the NCAA asked Sweeney to reconsider her core conclusions about the NCAA’s application and interpretation of a new eligibility system that provides up to five years of play but doesn’t benefit athletes who finished high school in 2022.

A group of a dozen athletes—including basketball players Brock Wisne, Aidan Shaw and Cade Tyson—maintain that it is a violation of antitrust law to deny them a chance to play another season when they could earn NIL and revenue-sharing money. The NCAA argues allowing players who have already exhausted their eligibility to play another season would jeopardize roster spots provided to freshmen and others who could be displaced, especially since many coaches would prefer seasoned, 22- and 23-year-old players as opposed to freshman.

Sweeney’s order on Monday at times struck a defensive tone, with the judge noting that while she “may not be an industry expert” about college sports, the “NCAA is in a bind of its own making.” As Sportico explained, Sweeney surprisingly certified a nationwide antitrust class after only a few weeks of litigation—a sharp contrast to the years needed for courts to certify nationwide antitrust classes in the noteworthy lawsuits brought by Ed O’Bannon, Shawne Alston and Grant House.

Similarly, Sweeney was unpersuaded by NCAA legal arguments that, as a private, membership association, it is owed deference in making business judgments before findings of antitrust liability. She starkly wrote that “the ‘chaos’ about which the NCAA now complains” is the association’s own doing and “the NCAA made its own choice which comes with its own consequences.”

Sweeney, whom President Joe Biden nominated to the bench in 2021 and who previously practiced in the areas of civil rights and employment discrimination, wrote that she “reiterates” her “sensitivity to the ‘extraordinary’ nature” of the injunction, but she maintained the NCAA’s problem is a result of denying eligibility to athletes who graduated high school in 2022.

The judge has not yet ruled on a separate but related topic of whether her injunction, which she previously wrote did not “enjoin the operation of transfer rules,” requires the NCAA to alter its application of transfer rules to allow players covered by the injunction to transfer. The two sides disagree about exactly what Sweeney meant when writing that the NCAA is enjoined from prohibiting the players in the class “from competing in a fifth season of collegiate athletics under the rule (as defined in the preliminary injunction order) or any NCAA bylaw.”

With Sweeney denying a stay, the NCAA can now ask the 10th Circuit to issue a stay while the appellate court reviews the appeal. A stay would render the athletes in the class action ineligible, as they were before Sweeney issued an injunction.

While the granting or denial of a stay might sound like legal jargon, there are real-world implications at stake. 

Remember, college teams’ rosters have limits, as required by the House settlement. It’s also now mid-August, with the fall semester about to start and many rosters already full. If a player who graduated in May can now return (due to the nationwide injunction) and take a spot held by another athlete, the displaced athlete suffers a harm. 

As Sportico explained, the displaced athlete could consider bringing their own antitrust lawsuit and seek an injunction.

If there was chaos before, there could be a lot more later.