A governor cannot call a play, pick a quarterback or move the chains on third-and-7. On Tuesday, Mike DeWine tried to do something almost as audacious: he tried to add a season to a college career after the NCAA had already taken it away.
Ohio's governor signed Executive Order 2026-04D, giving public and private colleges and universities in Ohio the option of allowing athletes from the high school class of 2022 to play a fifth year in 2026-27 — even if they have already played four seasons and even if the NCAA says their eligibility is finished. By Tuesday evening, the NCAA had answered through president Charlie Baker, and the answer sounded less like a press release than a warning.
"The Governor of Ohio cannot legislate NCAA eligibility rules," Baker said.
That is why a piece of paper signed in Columbus matters far beyond Ohio.
The season the class of 2022 did not get
Start with the rule underneath the fight. This past summer, the NCAA moved toward a model that gives athletes five years to play five seasons. The problem, for the class of 2022, is timing. The new approach applied to athletes in the high school class of 2023 and younger. Players who graduated in 2022 and had already played four seasons in four years were left on the outside — close enough to see the new door open, but not allowed to walk through it.
DeWine's order tries to wedge that door open inside Ohio. In the language quoted in reporting on the order, no Ohio state institution or private college "shall uphold any rule, requirement, standard or other limitation" that prevents a class-of-2022 student-athlete from fully participating in 2026-27, regardless of whether that athlete completed four seasons or exhausted eligibility under the NCAA's 2025-26 or prior regulations.
The order is not unconditional, and it does not simply declare every former player eligible again. Reporting on its terms says athletes must still fit the age-based framework — within five years of turning 19 or of full-time college enrollment, whichever came first — must remain academically eligible, and must not have participated in a professional sports league. In plain English: Ohio is offering its schools legal cover to use a fifth-year player the NCAA considers done. It is not forcing any school to do it.
"When the rules change, fairness has to remain part of the equation," DeWine said in a statement. "We want Ohio's student-athletes to have the same opportunity as student-athletes in other states."
His lieutenant governor, former Ohio State and Youngstown State championship coach Jim Tressel, added: "It's important we do not deprive our current student-athletes of the same opportunities enjoyed by their peers."
Eight schools, one very large shadow
Ohio has eight Division I programs, and the list explains why the NCAA could not shrug this off as a small-state experiment. It includes No. 4 Ohio State in the Big Ten, Cincinnati in the Big 12 and six schools in the Mid-American Conference.
That is precisely the NCAA's fear. If Columbus can keep a fifth-year contributor under a governor's order while a rival across a state line cannot, eligibility stops being a national rulebook and becomes a map — and recruiting would bend toward the states writing the most generous exceptions.
"One elected official seeking to make their own rules for their own schools' advantage is a terrible way to run athletic competitions," Baker said, while urging Congress to pass the Protect College Sports Act. No Ohio Division I program had said by Tuesday whether it would actually use the option. That silence is the tell: a school that plays an athlete under the order may win a Saturday and inherit a legal war by Monday.
The courtroom was already warm
DeWine did not sign into a vacuum. He signed on the same day a key eligibility case was argued in federal court.
In Wisne v. NCAA, a lower-court judge initially ruled for the players, granting NCAA athletes who graduated from high school in 2022 a fifth year of eligibility for this school year. An appeals court blocked that ruling, and on Tuesday a three-judge panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard the full argument. It did not immediately rule.
The judges, in the Associated Press account, sounded skeptical about whether the players could pinpoint the economic harm caused by the change, pressing plaintiff attorney Robert Shelquist on how to define the market the athletes say they are kept out of. U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Kelly pointed to the spread between sports, from football to golf, and the problem of lumping athletes with wildly different earning power into one market. NCAA attorney Rakesh Kilaru countered that the plaintiffs' analysis "lumps all of those individuals together in a way that does not make economic sense."
The panel even asked whether it should wait for Congress and the Protect College Sports Act. Both sides urged it not to wait: the class of 2022 does not have years to litigate, with football halfway over and basketball about to begin. Around the country the NCAA has recently won eligibility cases in Kentucky, Ohio and Arizona, while a Louisiana case had led LSU to look into two football players who spent time this summer in NFL training camps. Add a governor's signature, and "messy" looks generous.
We have seen a state do this before
If the strategy feels familiar, it should. California cleared the way for name, image and likeness compensation, other states copied it, and the NCAA — facing different rules in different places — was essentially forced to allow NIL payments nationwide. DeWine and Tressel are plainly hoping for a version of that cascade.
But an executive order is not a state law, its enforceability is an open question regardless of Wisne, and eligibility goes to who is allowed on the field at all. The NCAA signaled Tuesday that it intends to apply its rules consistently, including in Ohio. That is not the language of an organization preparing to fold quietly.
So Ohio's schools are left holding an option that is both tempting and dangerous: a fifth-year athlete who might help win games, wrapped inside a constitutional argument about who governs college sports. DeWine has offered them cover. Baker has told them, in effect, that the cover will not hold.
Somewhere in Ohio, a senior whose career was supposed to end is doing the math on one more year. The governor told him the door is open. The NCAA told him it is locked. The next fight is over who gets to decide.
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