Minnesota Timberwolves 2026 second-round pick Trey Kaufman-Renn is headed back to college.
The 24-year-old former Purdue star recently won a court order in Indiana against the NCAA and has signed with Kansas for his fifth season, and sixth year, in college basketball.
Kaufman-Renn’s signing is a reminder of a fundamental hurdle to stability and predictability in the application of NCAA rules. Even though colleges create and contractually agree to follow the rules of NCAA membership, the institutions are also opportunistic and competitive. They look for every advantage, even if it means acting in ways that undermine the NCAA and create incentives for other schools to do the same.
To that point, absent a court order, Kaufman-Renn would be NCAA-ineligible because he has already exhausted his eligibility. Put another way, Kansas, an NCAA member, is playing an athlete who can compete only because he obtained a court order preventing the NCAA from enforcing rules that member schools agree to follow.
It’s worth reflecting on why there are eligibility rules.
In college sports, eligibility rules reinforce the idea that athletes are full-time, degree-seeking students who, like their classmates, are generally expected to finish college after four or five years. College sports are not a “career” but an activity for students. It’s possible those students should also be considered employees, but even then, they would be students who come and go, and whose roster spots are taken over by incoming freshmen and transfers.
Eligibility rules are also intended to promote fair play and fair competition, so that schools, along with coaches and athletes, play by the same set of rules.
Kansas’s ability to play Kaufman-Renn pursuant to a court order, despite his having exhausted his NCAA eligibility under current NCAA rules, likely gives the Jayhawks a significant competitive advantage over other Big 12 and Division I schools whose rosters use NCAA-eligible players.
Kaufman-Renn’s situation isn’t unique.
College athletes across the country have sued the NCAA to extend their eligibility or return to college after launching pro careers. Their basic argument is that colleges acquire athletes’ services by offering them so-called NIL and revenue-sharing arrangements that often function as pay-for-play. When those colleges agree on rules limiting how much money any of them can offer, it raises a potential antitrust problem: The buyers of services in the market are arguably engaged in price-fixing.
These cases started in 2024, when then-Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia sought and obtained a court order allowing him to play a sixth college season (his fourth D-I season). Pavia’s win incentivized other athletes to sue, too. These athletes see a chance to be paid directly by schools through revenue sharing contemplated by the House settlement and NIL deals with third parties, not to mention athletic scholarships that cover tuition, housing, health resources and other benefits.
Even after the NCAA changed its eligibility rules in June to provide for up to five years of eligibility, new cases emerged. That’s because athletes who finished high school in the class of 2022 and had finished college earlier in the year were not retroactively granted extended eligibility. Kaufman-Renn finished high school in 2021 but redshirted his first year in college.
The lawsuits have created a litigation landscape that, absent the U.S. Supreme Court weighing in or Congress passing legislation that the president signs into law to immunize eligibility rules from antitrust scrutiny, is almost impossible to resolve.
The basic problem is that extremely similar lawsuits can be brought in courts in different jurisdictions, which aren’t bound by rulings in other jurisdictions. This creates a repeat-player problem: The NCAA’s win in one state doesn’t deter an athlete in another state from bringing a similar claim.
To that point, the NCAA appears likely to win Wisne v. NCAA. But a win in Wisne would bind only federal courts within the 10th Circuit’s jurisdiction: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming. Although Kaufman-Renn plays for Kansas, his court order is from a state court in Indiana and would not be altered by the NCAA winning Wisne.
If the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Wisne or a similar case and issued a ruling, the effect would be national. But the Supreme Court isn’t currently considering such a case, and even if it agrees to hear one in the current term, a decision likely wouldn’t be issued until next June.
There’s also the possibility that Congress will pass the Protect College Sports Act. A version of the bill passed the Senate in September but could face resistance and changes in the House. Both chambers must pass an identical bill before it is sent to President Trump.
The version that passed the Senate would exempt the NCAA and its members from antitrust claims regarding eligibility, transfers, recruiting and other topics. It would also allow the NCAA to argue that eligibility and other claims are preempted by a uniform federal regulatory framework. But those are merely concepts and potential policies unless and until they become law. A new Congress, likely with Democrats in control of the House and possibly also the Senate, will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027, so the clock for Congress to act is ticking.
Schools aren’t helping the NCAA, either.
Athletes are willing to incur the costs, time and controversy involved in suing the NCAA, at least in part because they believe a school would sign them if a court order made them available. A coach may have made a promise or otherwise given assurances that a roster spot is waiting.
It’s not just the NCAA that loses its ability to enforce rules member schools agree to follow. Eligible athletes who lose roster spots, or at least playing time, to seasoned athletes like Kaufman-Renn, who at 24 is likely to attract coaches who want to win now, suffer, too.
Kaufman-Renn played five games for the Timberwolves’ summer league team, averaging 6.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 0.6 assists per game. He didn’t sign with the team and could rejoin the NBA next year after another season of development in college basketball.
Something like this wouldn’t happen in the major pro leagues, since eligibility rules are collectively bargained between leagues and unions and are thus exempt from antitrust scrutiny. Pro teams also tend to follow league edicts, especially since teams and their owners are contractually bound to their leagues.
Of course, NCAA member schools are contractually bound to the NCAA as well. Yet increasingly they appear willing to treat those obligations as optional when a court order creates an opportunity to acquire talent.
Until that changes, the NCAA’s eligibility problem isn’t merely a litigation problem—it’s a membership problem.