Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed an executive order Tuesday giving the state’s colleges and universities the power to decide whether athletes who graduated high school in 2022 can play a fifth season.
The move directly challenges a new NCAA eligibility rule that shuts those athletes out. OutKick reported the order may allow eligible players to compete even after the NCAA has already said athletes who finished four seasons cannot get another year.
DeWine framed the decision as a simple matter of fairness. Student-athletes who followed the rules should not lose a chance their peers elsewhere still hold. The NCAA answered the same day with a hard no.
In a statement, the Republican governor put the principle in plain terms.
“When the rules change, fairness has to remain part of the equation,”
He added the core goal for Ohio programs.
“We want Ohio’s student-athletes to have the same opportunity as student-athletes in other states.”
That stance puts a state chief executive between young athletes and a national sports body that keeps rewriting the terms midstream. It also lands inside a wider fight over who sets the rules for college sports, and who pays the price when those rules shift.
NCAA President Charlie Baker, the former Massachusetts governor, sent a memo to member schools. OutKick obtained it. Baker insisted DeWine “cannot legislate NCAA eligibility rules.”
He went further, warning against state-by-state carve-outs.
“One elected official seeking to make their own rules for their own schools’ advantage is a terrible way to run athletic competitions,”
Baker tied the clash to federal legislation. He wrote that the episode is “precisely why Congress must pass the PCSA as soon as possible,” referring to the Protect College Sports Act. A bipartisan Senate vote of 74-24 had already advanced related pressure on the issue in recent coverage of the bill.
Baker also pointed to process and courts. NCAA members, he said, “vote[d] unanimously to implement the age-based eligibility change in this way,” and “the Ohio Court of Appeals just recently agreed with that decision.” He claimed multiple appellate courts have recognized the need for consistent eligibility rules and the disruption that follows when standards differ by school or state. The NCAA, he closed, “will protect the interests of all member institutions and student-athletes.”
That is the institutional line: uniformity first, even when a whole high-school class loses a year it once expected. DeWine’s order rejects that trade-off for Ohio kids.
Attorney Ryan Downton, who represents a group of athletes in a key eligibility case pending in an Ohio court, welcomed the governor’s step. His statement was obtained exclusively by OutKick.
“We are thankful that Gov. DeWine took action to ensure that all student-athletes in Ohio are treated equitably with their peers. Hopefully, the NCAA will stop its misguided quest to deny the Class of 2022 the same fifth year offered to everyone else. If not, we hope other governors will follow suit.”
Sources told OutKick’s Trey Wallace on Tuesday night that other governors could issue similar orders as soon as next week. If that happens, the NCAA’s preferred national standard starts looking like a paper preference, not a settled rule.
Fairness fights in college sports rarely stay narrow. The same association that polices eligibility has also faced courtroom battles over women’s sports protections, including a case in which a Biden-appointed federal judge threw out Riley Gaines’ Title IX challenge against the NCAA.
DeWine’s order did not appear in a vacuum. A lower-court judge had already sided with players, granting NCAA athletes from the 2022 high-school class a fifth year for the current school year. An appeals court then blocked that ruling. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard full arguments and issued no immediate decision.
During those arguments, judges pressed plaintiff attorney Robert Shelquist with repeated questions about how the players define the market and prove economic harm, the antitrust benchmark. The same day as Ohio’s order, that case continued to turn on whether athletes can show real financial injury from the eligibility cutoff, including lost NIL and revenue opportunities.
Elsewhere the NCAA has notched wins. Courts in Kentucky, Ohio, and Arizona have sided with the association on eligibility disputes. A Louisiana-related injunction, by contrast, left LSU examining two football players who had spent time in NFL training camps. The pattern is uneven: some benches back uniform NCAA rules, others open doors the association wants closed.
When federal judges weigh sports eligibility and sex-based categories, the results often frustrate parents and female athletes who want clear lines. One recent example saw a federal judge toss a DOJ lawsuit and leave California free to keep male athletes on girls’ teams.
Ohio fields eight Division I programs, including Ohio State, Cincinnati, and six Mid-American Conference schools. None issued an immediate public response to the executive order. Under DeWine’s directive, those schools now hold the decision: honor the NCAA cutoff or let 2022 graduates compete a fifth season.
That silence matters. Coaches and athletic directors must weigh roster spots, conference pressure, and possible NCAA retaliation against the chance to keep experienced players. Taxpayers and ticket buyers will notice who chooses caution and who chooses the athletes already on campus.
College sports policy has become another arena where voters watch whether leaders defend basic fairness or defer to distant boards. Parallel fights over biological males in women’s categories have forced even some Democrats to adjust, as when a South Carolina Democrat rejected men in women’s sports after scrutiny of her record.
State action has moved college sports before. California’s NIL law set off a chain reaction. Other states followed, and the NCAA was essentially forced to allow name, image, and likeness deals. DeWine’s order follows that state-first path: if the national body will not protect a class of athletes, a governor will.
Baker wants Congress to settle the field with the Protect College Sports Act. He has discussed NIL paydays and the bill in public appearances, including on “The Sunday Briefing.” Revenue-sharing from the House settlement already reshapes the money side of the sport. Eligibility remains the unfinished piece.
Until federal law is clear, governors who value equal treatment for their own student-athletes have every incentive to act. Executive orders are one tool. Lawmakers who back firm executive action on institutional failures understand the same point: when bureaucracies stall, elected officials can still move.
The Class of 2022 did not invent the fifth-year question. Rule changes after they entered the system did. DeWine’s order restores the choice to Ohio campuses instead of leaving it locked inside NCAA headquarters.
Athletes who did the work should not lose a season because a committee later decided the calendar looked cleaner without them. Governors who refuse that deal are simply doing the job the NCAA will not.
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