Pavia v. NCAA: Right of Publicity

A federal court enjoined the NCAA's JUCO eligibility rule for Diego Pavia, treating lost NIL income as the competitive injury under the Sherman Act.

Pavia v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, No. 3:24-cv-01336 (M.D. Tenn.), is the case that crystallized a powerful new theory in college-sports litigation: that the real antitrust injury from an eligibility rule is the athlete’s lost ability to earn name, image, and likeness compensation. Diego Pavia, a quarterback at Vanderbilt who had previously played at a junior college and at New Mexico State, sued the NCAA in late 2024. He argued that the NCAA’s practice of counting his junior-college seasons against his Division I eligibility, the so-called JUCO rule, was an unreasonable restraint of trade that would push him out of college football and end his NIL earning. Judge William L. Campbell, Jr., of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee granted a preliminary injunction in December 2024, allowing Pavia to play in 2025. The NCAA appealed, then mooted its own appeal by granting a blanket waiver, and the Sixth Circuit dismissed the appeal in October 2025.

At a glance

Case: Pavia v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, No. 3:24-cv-01336 (M.D. Tenn.), before Judge William L. Campbell, Jr.; appeal at Pavia v. NCAA, No. 24-6153 (6th Cir.).
Decided: Preliminary injunction granted December 18, 2024; Sixth Circuit dismissed the NCAA’s appeal as moot on October 1, 2025.
Holding: Pavia showed a strong likelihood that the JUCO eligibility rule unreasonably restrains the Division I football labor market under Sherman Act Section 1, and that the lost season and the lost chance to build his personal brand constituted irreparable harm, warranting an injunction against enforcement as to him.
Status: The Sixth Circuit dismissed the appeal as moot after the NCAA granted a blanket waiver to similarly situated athletes, and it declined to vacate the injunction under Munsingwear because the NCAA itself caused the mootness. The 2025 season the injunction covered has since been played. The case is back before the district court and the merits remain unresolved as of July 2026.

The rule and the market theory

The NCAA permits an athlete four seasons of competition, to be used within a five-year clock. The JUCO rule, as applied to Pavia, counted the seasons he spent at a junior college, a school outside the NCAA’s own structure, toward those four permitted years. The result was that his time at the two-year college accelerated the exhaustion of his Division I eligibility, threatening to end his career before he wished to stop playing.

Pavia’s Section 1 theory tracked the reasoning that had already begun to reshape NCAA law after NCAA v. Alston, 594 U.S. 69 (2021). Once the Supreme Court held that NCAA restraints on athlete compensation face ordinary rule-of-reason scrutiny, the association’s claim to special antitrust deference collapsed. Pavia argued that eligibility rules, like compensation rules, operate in and restrain a genuine market: the labor market for Division I football players. By counting non-NCAA seasons and forcing players out earlier, the JUCO rule reduces the supply of experienced players available to Division I schools and cuts short athletes’ ability to sell their services and their NIL rights in that market. The restraint, he contended, lacked a legitimate procompetitive justification sufficient to survive the rule of reason.

The NIL injury and irreparable harm

The distinctive contribution of Pavia is how squarely it placed NIL earnings at the center of the injury analysis. Judge Campbell’s reasoning emphasized that the NIL era has fundamentally changed college sports. Where amateurism once meant athletes earned nothing from their play, athletes now derive real income from their name, image, and likeness, and that income depends on continued participation at a visible, high-level program. An eligibility rule that ends an athlete’s Division I career therefore does more than bench him. It terminates his access to the NIL market and the compensation that flows from it.

That framing did double work. It supported the antitrust merits by identifying a concrete commercial market the rule restrains, the market in which Division I athletes compete for positions and monetize their identities. And it fed the irreparable-harm analysis, though with a wrinkle worth noting. Judge Campbell rested that finding first on the settled proposition that denial of the ability to play sports is itself irreparable harm, and he acknowledged that the value of missed NIL opportunities could potentially be quantified in dollars. What could not be repaired was the lost opportunity to play Division I football and, with it, the exposure and the personal brand that season would have built. A season of foregone play at Vanderbilt is gone for good, and so is the brand-building that comes with it. The court found a strong likelihood of success on the Sherman Act claim, found irreparable harm, and enjoined the NCAA from applying the JUCO rule to end his eligibility. It also enjoined the NCAA’s Rule of Restitution, which would otherwise have exposed Vanderbilt to retroactive punishment if the injunction were later undone.

The mootness ending and its odd mechanics

The procedural conclusion of the case is instructive. The NCAA appealed the injunction to the Sixth Circuit. At the same time, its Division I Board of Directors approved a blanket waiver extending an extra year of eligibility for the 2025-26 year to former junior-college athletes in circumstances like Pavia’s. That waiver guaranteed Pavia the very thing his injunction secured: the ability to play in 2025.

Having given Pavia the relief he sought, the NCAA found its appeal undermined. On October 1, 2025, the Sixth Circuit dismissed the appeal as moot, reasoning that no ruling on the injunction could provide effectual relief once Pavia’s 2025 eligibility was assured by the association’s own waiver. The court noted the peculiarity that it was the NCAA’s voluntary action that mooted the case, which meant the NCAA could not use the appeal to wipe away the injunction it had effectively rendered academic. Concurring opinions stressed that the merits questions, whether eligibility rules like the JUCO rule are unlawful restraints, remain open and call for a fuller evidentiary record. The dismissal resolved Pavia’s situation without settling the doctrine.

What it started

Pavia did not produce a final merits ruling, but its influence has been immediate. By treating lost NIL compensation as the antitrust injury flowing from eligibility limits, it supplied a template that other athletes quickly copied. A wave of eligibility challenges followed, with players seeking injunctions on the theory that a rule ending their careers also ends their NIL earning. District courts have often granted that relief, but as of July 2026 the appellate results have run consistently the other way. The Seventh Circuit reversed an eligibility injunction in Fourqurean v. NCAA, 143 F.4th 859 (7th Cir. 2025); the Third Circuit vacated one in Elad v. NCAA, No. 25-1870 (3d Cir. Nov. 25, 2025); and the Fourth Circuit vacated another in Robinson v. NCAA, No. 25-2003 (4th Cir. Apr. 3, 2026). Notably, those courts accepted the premise that eligibility rules are commercial and open to antitrust scrutiny. What they rejected was the proof: each faulted the district court for failing to define the relevant labor market on actual evidence, and the Fourth Circuit added that a full rule-of-reason analysis is required rather than an abbreviated quick look. The NCAA’s decision to grant blanket waivers rather than litigate to judgment reflects an association managing legal exposure case by case rather than defending its eligibility structure to a final decision.

For the law of athlete publicity, Pavia completes a conceptual shift. Eligibility and NIL, once separate domains, are now analytically fused: a rule that controls whether an athlete can play is understood as a rule that controls whether he can earn from his identity, and that fusion is what brings eligibility rules within the reach of antitrust.

Open questions

Will a court rule on the merits? Because Pavia ended on mootness, no appellate court has decided whether the JUCO rule actually violates the Sherman Act. A merits ruling with a full record is still awaited.
Will the circuits split? They have not yet. As of July 2026 the Third, Fourth, and Seventh Circuits have each undone an eligibility injunction, each agreeing that the rules are subject to antitrust scrutiny but holding that the athlete failed to prove a relevant market. The live question is whether any plaintiff can build a record that meets that standard, and observers expect the issue to reach the Supreme Court eventually.
Does the labor-market theory imply employment? Treating athletes as sellers in a labor market raises unresolved questions about employment status, revenue sharing, and collective bargaining that eligibility injunctions do not answer.

Implications for athletes and institutions

Lost NIL income is a litigable injury. Athletes challenging eligibility rules can frame the harm as lost name, image, and likeness earnings, which strengthens both the antitrust theory and the case for irreparable harm.
Eligibility rules are now antitrust-exposed. After Alston and Pavia, rules governing how many seasons an athlete may play, and whether outside seasons count, are analyzed as potential restraints on the athlete labor market.
Waivers can moot appeals but not the doctrine. The NCAA’s practice of granting blanket waivers resolves individual cases and can defeat appeals, but it leaves the underlying legality of eligibility rules undecided and open to renewed challenge.
Expect continued litigation and uncertainty. With no merits ruling anywhere and three circuits now insisting on rigorous market proof, athletes and schools should plan around an unsettled landscape in which district-court injunctions are obtainable but often do not survive appeal.

Frequently asked questions

What is the NCAA ‘JUCO rule’ that Pavia challenged? The rule counts an athlete’s seasons at a junior college, a non-NCAA school, against the four years of competition the NCAA allows within a five-year window. Diego Pavia argued that counting his junior-college seasons prematurely exhausted his Division I eligibility, and that the rule was an unreasonable restraint of trade under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Why did lost NIL earnings matter to the injunction? Pavia argued the JUCO rule would force him out of Division I football and cut off his ability to earn name, image, and likeness compensation, which depends on continued play at a high-profile program. The district court accepted that the JUCO rule restrains the Division I labor market in which athletes sell their services and monetize their identities. On irreparable harm the court was more careful: it noted that the value of missed NIL deals could potentially be quantified in dollars, and rested the finding on the lost season itself and on the lost chance to gain exposure and build a personal brand.

How did the case end? The district court granted Pavia a preliminary injunction in December 2024, letting him play in 2025. The NCAA appealed to the Sixth Circuit but also granted a blanket waiver to similarly situated former junior-college athletes. In October 2025, the Sixth Circuit dismissed the appeal as moot because the NCAA’s own waiver had given Pavia the relief he sought.