NCAA President Charlie Baker reacts to Diego Pavia eligibility ruling

Wednesday afternoon, a Tennessee district court judge sent shockwaves through the college football world by granting Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia a preliminary injunction against the NCAA enforcing eligibility restrictions for seasons spent at the junior college level.

While this is only a temporary solution for Pavia, who is tentatively eligible to play in 2025 barring any further legal challenges, the ruling could have much broader implications.

Those far-reaching implications are why the NCAA issued a statement late Wednesday criticizing the decision by U.S. District Court of Middle Tennessee Judge William Campbell.

NCAA President Charlie Baker doubled down on that statement Thursday afternoon during an in-studio appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, pointing out the potential unintended consequences the Pavia decision could have on NCAA eligibility writ large. In effect, by ruling JUCO seasons counting towards NCAA eligibility violates antitrust laws, it opens the door for other JUCO athletes to petition for additional years of NCAA eligibility.

“By the way, I love watching (Pavia) play, I really do. … But my big worry about it is there’s a rhythm to college sports. And the rules associated with (the NCAA’s) four years of eligibility – except for injuries and redshirts and all the rest – has been with us forever, and it’s how we make it possible to sort of line up academic performance with athletic performance and opportunity, and to make sure the next generation of kids have a place to go,” Baker said Thursday. “If you writ large this decision across the JUCOs, and then maybe somebody says ‘Well hell, if JUCOs get two years plus four, why shouldn’t anybody that goes to college get six?’ You’re going to create a freight train collision … with all the high school kids that are going to have no place to go.”

Baker: Pavia ruling could impact NCAA scholarship opportunities

Should Campbell’s ruling establish a national precedent, it could forever alter the cyclical nature of NCAA eligibility, thus putting further limits on scholarships as Baker suggests.

“One of the big beauties of college sports generally, … is it’s still $4 billion in scholarships. When you talk to a lot of the kids that don’t play at the big-time schools, it’s the scholarship that made it possible for them to go to college in the first place, because their families weren’t in a position to pay for it. It gave them this huge really great base of support and teammates to help them through the tough times,” Baker continued. “And I’d hate to end up in a situation … there’s 120-130,000 kids a year that actually go from high school to college. … It would be awful if there was just no place for them to go. … But if you suddenly take that four years and you turn it into six, for some huge percentage of the kids there, there’s really no place for the kids coming out of high school to go.”

Diego Pavia started his career at the JUCO level for two years at the New Mexico Military Institute and played three years of FBS football – two at New Mexico State and one at Vanderbilt. The NCAA will be able to challenge the ruling, but for now, he has another season.

Nick Schultz contributed to this report.