NCAA Ratifies Age-Based Eligibility Guidelines, Reshaping Postgraduate Opportunities for Harvard’s Athletes

The NCAA’s Division I Cabinet unanimously voted on Tuesday afternoon to overhaul its Division I eligibility rules, adopting an age-based, five-year window that begins following athletes’ high school graduation or 19th birthday, whichever comes first. The decision is pending the conclusion of the Cabinet’s meeting on Wednesday.

Current student-athletes with remaining eligibility after the 2025-2026 school year can elect to follow either eligibility model, though any high school graduates as of spring 2026 — and those currently enrolled in a college — will be required to follow the age-based rules. Ivy League student-athletes — previously limited to four years of eligibility at their schools — can now graduate with an Ivy League degree before transferring to a Power Five school, without having to graduate early or informally redshirt to preserve a first year.

Exceptions will be made for pregnancy, official religious missions, and active-duty military service.

Under previous Division I eligibility rules, enrolled student-athletes were permitted to compete in four seasons over five years with no age restrictions, meaning prospective athletes could delay college enrollment for years while maintaining the same eligibility window.

The eligibility changes also effectively eliminate the practice of redshirting — a rule that enabled students to preserve a year of eligibility if they played no more than a specified number of games in a year. Due to redshirting, student-athletes could play four seasons over five years.

However, all student-athletes will now have a standardized, finite timer of five seasons within five academic years.

This comes after the NCAA faced a wave of lawsuits — primarily over how eligibility for junior college transfers was calculated — pushing the NCAA to adopt the standardized model amid an evolving NIL landscape and an increasingly active transfer portal.

While redshirting is common in other Division I leagues, the Ivy League has prohibited traditional redshirting, with student-athletes limited to four seasons across their four undergraduate years. The Ivy League does not permit its athletics teams to accept graduate student transfers in their fifth year.

The Director of Harvard Athletics, Erin McDermott, wrote in a statement that it “was too early to assess” the impact of the new eligibility rules but acknowledged the changes the ruling could create for Harvard’s student-athletes.

“At a high level, however, we generally support policies that help ensure college athletics remains closely aligned with the traditional student experience,” McDermott wrote. “If adopted as currently envisioned, the model could create additional opportunities for students to compete at Harvard, complete their undergraduate education in four years, and then pursue graduate study elsewhere while continuing to use their remaining eligibility.”

Some of Harvard’s athletes, particularly football players, chose to graduate early to preserve their fourth year of eligibility to transfer to a Power Four school. Other football players have informally sat out their freshman year, graduated from Harvard in four years, and transferred to another program.

Quarterback Jaden Craig — the Crimson’s all-time leading passer — graduated this past December after sitting out his freshman year and is expected to claim the starting job at Texas Christian University. Craig follows other former teammates who have taken the graduate transfer path, including wide receiver Cooper Barkate — who had the most receiving yards of any FCS player his junior year at Harvard, played for Duke last season, and is completing his collegiate career at the University of Miami — and defensive lineman Thor Griffith — who transferred to the University of Louisville.

“It leads to a lot of mental gymnastics for me,” head football coach Andrew Aurich said. “If they’re good enough to help us win games, and they’re not playing for us because we’re protecting redshirt, then we’re obviously not as good a team as we could be if they were able to be on the field.”

Other athletes have chosen to sit out their senior year at Harvard — an informal redshirt that allows them to preserve a year of eligibility and transfer upon graduating under the standard four-year timeline.

Former men’s water polo player James Rozolis-Hill, who set the program record with 358 goals scored, said he preserved his eligibility during his senior year for a graduate transfer before committing to Stanford. The Cardinal program boasts 11 NCAA Championships and 36 NCAA appearances.

“I didn’t play, though, my last year here to save my eligibility to go to Stanford,” Rozolis-Hill said. “So, if that rule were implemented when I was a junior or sophomore, I would have most definitely played my fourth year here, and then see where it would have gone, and probably ended up in the same spot.”

“Obviously, I’m not playing water polo nearly as much as I would if I had a season,” he added. “I feel like this whole thing was a similar process in COVID. Honestly, when everything was shut down, it’s like on your own, but this time around, there was more clarity towards the end, because I knew where I was going.”

Rozolis-Hill underscored the “opportunity to go to both the schools that I dreamed of going to.”

“For me, it’s not necessarily an undergraduate experience; it’s more so continuing after I got my bachelor’s degree, so it’s more taking grad school-level courses, broadening horizons, and expanding the network,” he added.

The rising captain of the men’s basketball team — Thomas Batties II, a Second-Team All-Ivy League hooper last season — said the new eligibility rules expand his post-undergraduate options, including professional and graduate transfer opportunities to a Power Five school — a path he wouldn’t have considered beforehand.

“There’s a lot of discussions and concerns about roster retention over the years with NIL evolving, and more money being pumped into it at different schools,” Batties II explained. “Then you add in discussions between the value of the Harvard degree versus the value of the immediate gratification of big contracts from Power Five schools.”

“Some people will call players at other schools mercenaries, because guys are there for the money, and to maximize their time on the court to possibly get more money or to go pro. So, it’ll put people in less of a rush, especially in this conference,” the captain added. “They won’t feel the pressure to have to become as good as they can and just leave, have the Ivy League be a stepping stone to play in a different conference or a more prestigious conference.”

Notably, now-Providence College point guard Malik Mack transferred from Harvard to Georgetown after a standout freshman year in 2024, where he earned eight-straight Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors and set the single-season freshman scoring record with 413 points.

Rising senior Sam Burgess, a First-Team All-Ivy cross country runner last season, said the discussions surrounding the eligibility ruling had not largely influenced his day-to-day life as a student athlete.

“Running in college has been a great experience thus far,” Burgess said. “I know I wouldn’t be able to do it here, but just doing it for another year somewhere else, experiencing a different team culture — I think would be pretty cool.”

Barring obstruction, the policy will come into effect at the end of the Division I Cabinet’s meeting on Wednesday.

“I’m super excited about it from a football standpoint,” Aurich said. “Just thinking about the other sports, because that’s going to help out a lot of other sports here, where they’ll be able to win some recruiting battles.”

“The prospective student athletes are going to recognize, ‘I can get the Harvard degree, and then go grad transfer and play at this blue blood program, and get that experience of that,’ whatever sport it is,” he added.

Staff writer Reed M. Trimble contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Uy B. Pham can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ubp.88. Follow him on X @uybpham.