Jack Pyburn had the kind of preseason debut every undrafted rookie dreams about. With most of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ starters sitting out against the New York Jets, Pyburn got four quarters to prove he belonged. He made the most of them, getting two sacks in Tampa Bay’s 24-16 win.

A few days later, he had an entirely different decision to make: stay in the NFL or go back to college.

That sounds impossible. Pyburn signed a three-year contract with the Buccaneers in May, completed rookie minicamp and training camp, played in a professional game, and put himself in the mix for a spot on Tampa Bay’s 53-man roster. Then a Louisiana judge temporarily gave him permission to end that contract, repay his NFL earnings, and go back to college football.

Pyburn's one of several players caught in this unusual situation. Former Ole Miss tight end Dae’Quan Wright entered the transfer portal while still on the Cleveland Browns’ roster. Former Ole Miss safety Wydett Williams played 61 defensive snaps for the Arizona Cardinals in the Hall of Fame Game and is covered by the same court order. Running backs Anthony Hankerson and TJ Harden also spent the preseason with NFL teams.

This doesn’t mean every player cut by an NFL team can simply call his old college coach and ask for his job back. The order is temporary and applies only to the athletes involved in the lawsuit. The NCAA will also have multiple opportunities to challenge it.

Still, one of college football’s clearest lines has suddenly been crossed. For the first time, the NFL may not be a one-way door.

Jack Pyburn Is The Perfect Test Case

Pyburn got to Florida in 2022 and played in eight games as a freshman. He appeared in nine more games the next year before tearing his ACL, then came back to start the final eight games of 2024. After transferring to LSU for 2025, he became an 11-game starter and finished with 52 tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, and two sacks. Pro Football Focus gave him an 85.3 run-defense grade, which ranked 22nd among qualified FBS edge defenders.

That’s a solid college career. It just didn’t quite turn into a draft pick.

Tampa Bay signed Pyburn as an undrafted free agent, putting him into the usual preseason scramble for one of the final spots on a 90-man roster. Once he signed, the assumption was that his college career was over. NCAA rules have generally treated signing a professional contract, accepting professional pay, or playing for a professional team in the same sport as the end of a player’s eligibility.

Pyburn could've played professional baseball and then come back to college football. That kind of thing has happened before. But playing professional football on Friday and college football a few weeks later? That was supposed to be off the table.

Judge William Jorden’s order from Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court temporarily changes that for this group of players. Nearly three dozen athletes across several sports filed the lawsuit, including 16 football players. The order says the NCAA can't keep those athletes from playing because they signed with an agent, signed a professional contract, or appeared in a professional game, as long as they end those agreements before returning to college and pay back the money they earned.

The NFL players covered by the order have until Sept. 1st to get released and join a college roster. There’s an injunction hearing scheduled for Aug. 31, so this isn't quite a final decision yet. It also doesn’t mean every player involved will actually suit up in college this fall.

Pyburn might not want to leave Tampa Bay anyway. People around the league believe he has a legitimate chance to make the Bucs’ roster, and his two-sack preseason performance certainly didn’t hurt. The lawsuit gives him an option. It doesn’t force him to use it.

That option still gives him more leverage than an undrafted rookie usually has. If Tampa Bay sees him as a practice-squad player but a college program sees him as a starter with real compensation attached, Pyburn can at least compare those paths. He doesn’t have to automatically accept the usual NFL grind and hope his opportunity comes later. He can decide whether another year of college film, development, and money makes more sense than spending a season near the bottom of an NFL depth chart.

One Big 12 general manager told CBS Sports that Pyburn’s agent could be putting pressure on the Bucs to decide whether he belongs on the 53-man roster. That’s speculation, and Pyburn hasn’t said that’s his plan. But it shows how quickly this ruling can change the conversation for both the player and the team.

Wright's already taken the ruling from an interesting legal idea to something real. The former Ole Miss tight end caught 39 passes for 635 yards in 2025 and earned second-team All-SEC honors. He signed with Philadelphia, got released, joined Cleveland and then became what is believed to be the first active NFL player to enter the college football transfer portal.

Junior Tuihalamaka showed how quickly the college side can react, too. After playing 54 games over four seasons at Notre Dame, the veteran defensive end entered the reopened portal and committed to LSU on Friday. The Tigers didn’t need months of evaluation or a full recruiting cycle. They needed a court order and an open roster spot.

The NCAA Created The Gap Everyone's Suing Over

The NFL part of this is new, but the eligibility mess behind it has been building all summer. For decades, Division I athletes generally had four seasons to play within a five-year window. That extra year gave players room for a redshirt season or one lost to an injury. But if a player stayed healthy and played all four seasons, like most of these players did, that was supposed to be it.

Then the pandemic threw the whole system off. Players who competed during the disrupted 2020 season received an extra year. After that, Diego Pavia successfully challenged the NCAA’s decision to count his junior-college seasons against his Division I eligibility. That led to a one-year waiver for other former junior-college players in 2025-26.

Every exception made the next hard cutoff tougher to defend. In June, the NCAA finally replaced the old system with an age-based eligibility model. Players who enroll by the academic year after their 19th birthday will now have five years to compete during one continuous five-year period. Redshirts, season-of-competition limits, and most of the old waiver categories are going away. For athletes entering college in fall 2027 or later, this new system will be the only one available.

The idea was to make eligibility easier to understand. Instead, the transition created an even bigger headache.

Current athletes who still have eligibility after 2025-26 can use either the old rules or the new system, whichever benefits them more. That left the high school Class of 2022 stuck in a very specific gap: older players got the pandemic exception, younger players will get the new five-for-five model, and the group in between played four straight seasons and ran out of eligibility right before the rules changed.

The NCAA says that timing is important. Incoming freshmen signed with schools expecting the outgoing seniors to leave. Coaches used the transfer portal, handed out revenue-sharing money, and built 105-player rosters based on the rules that existed at the time. Bringing thousands of unexpected fifth-year players back into the market in late summer doesn’t create new roster spots. It means somebody else has to lose one.

The players see it differently. They argue the NCAA moved the finish line after they'd already made major career decisions. Their Louisiana lawsuit accuses the organization of acting in bad faith by giving the same five-year opportunity to the classes immediately before and after them while leaving their group out.

More than 100 athletes have now joined at least a dozen eligibility lawsuits across the country.

The one's who got relief through separate state cases are protected unless those orders are stayed or overturned. Ryan Downton, one of the attorneys representing the Louisiana group, said his firm was already preparing more state-court filings.

That’s where college football stands heading into the season. Two players with nearly identical careers can get completely different answers depending on where they filed, which judge heard the case, and whether their temporary protection lasts long enough for them to actually join a roster.

So much for making eligibility simple.

College Football’s Last Clean Boundary Is Disappearing

The NCAA’s response to the Louisiana ruling was pretty blunt. Senior vice president Tim Buckley said attorneys wouldn’t be satisfied until “every professional athlete can treat college sports as a fallback option.” He also argued that letting these players return would take opportunities away from athletes who haven’t had a college career yet.

There's a real concern there, even if the NCAA's being a little overdramatic about it all.

The Louisiana judge opened the transfer portal to the players for one week and blocked the NCAA from enforcing their new “ghost transfer” penalties against schools that add them. Those penalties are severe: a head coach can be suspended for half a season, and the program can be fined 20% of their sports' budget for adding a player who never properly entered the portal.

The judge also blocked the NCAA’s Rule of Restitution, which could punish a school for playing an athlete under a court order that later gets overturned. That protection is going to end up being huge. A coach is much less likely to use a roster spot on one of these players if the program could get punished later for simply following a judge’s ruling.

The order also didn’t magically create extra roster spots. The 105-player limit is still there. So are the revenue-sharing limits and the very real problem of adding someone after camp is already underway.

A fifth-year player might have better college film than anyone else at his position, but he still has to learn the defense, enroll in school, get through compliance, and walk into a locker room that's been preparing without him for eight months. He's also got to take someone else's spot.

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said on Friday that it was too late for his program to bring anyone back. Other schools clearly see it differently. LSU added Tuihalamaka almost immediately, and college personnel departments were already reaching out to NFL-connected players before the Louisiana order made a return possible.

That's where this temporary ruling could have a lasting impact, even if the NCAA eventually wins the case.

College football has spent years becoming more professional while insisting it isn’t professional. Players can receive direct revenue-sharing payments from schools, sign outside NIL deals, work with agents, and move through a national transfer portal. General managers now manage rosters and budgets that look a lot more like a professional front office than the old recruiting department ever did.

If this whole idea catches on, declaring for the draft becomes a lot less final for players on the edge. A prospect could declare, go undrafted, spend four months inside an NFL building, and learn exactly how the league views him. If he gets cut, college becomes another development year instead of a road he already left behind.

The transfer portal could start to look a little like the NFL waiver wire too. College staffs could watch preseason cut lists to identify former starters who still fit under the five-year age window and help find a way to get them eligible. A team that loses a linebacker or defensive end to injury in August could replace him with someone who was taking NFL practice reps a few days earlier.

That would create an obvious recruiting headache. Coaches already promised roles and money to the players who stayed. Freshmen come in expecting certain veterans to be gone. A 23-year-old who just spent the summer in an NFL strength program can change a depth chart without being there for spring practice or most of fall camp.

That possibility didn’t exist a week ago.

Now college football has to plan for it.

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