Utah quarterback Cameron Rising, a seventh-year senior, has played his final snap of the 2024 campaign. But it might not be his last collegiate game.
Rising could return to play NCAA football with an eighth year of eligibility. He will be 26 at the start of the 2025 season. While Rising will be significantly older than most of the players on the gridiron, he’s far from being the oldest college football player.
As a 29-year-old true freshman, Arkansas wide receiver Monte Harrison is Division I football’s senior citizen. Harrison is only six years younger than his positional coach, Razorbacks receiver coach Ronnie Fouch, 35. Miami’s Cam McCormick, 26, is in his ninth year of NCAA eligibility.
But how is any of this possible? How are these college football players playing well into their late 20s?
To find out, we first need to understand what it means to be NCAA-eligible.
College athletes must first pass 16 Core Courses while in high school while maintaining a Core Course grade point average of 2.3 for Division I and 2.2 for Division II; the Core Course GPA only considers the NCAA-necessary classes. Student-athletes register with the NCAA’s Eligibility Center by the beginning of their junior year of high school.
If the student-athlete graduates high school with these requirements, they must be given amateur status. While NIL rules allow collegiate athletes to receive payment for the use of their name, image and likeness, the laws vary state by state and institution by institution. Student-athletes are recommended to tread lightly during their high school journey, as breaking the NCAA’s NIL rules could lead to self-sabotage and the loss of their eligibility.
If you’ve been following these steps down to a tee, pop the champagne — you are officially academically eligible to play in the NCAA.
Once the student-athlete graduates to the collegiate level, NIL rules loosen up a lot more, but like the laws, a college athlete’s minimum GPA widely varies by the university. Stay at or above that GPA, and you will remain academically eligible to play NCAA sports. Fall below it, and you will remain ineligible until you improve your grades.
Now that we know how to become NCAA eligible, how do college football players like Rising, Harrison, and McCormick stay eligible for so long?
The NCAA allows for five years of academic eligibility to compete athletically for four seasons. That extra season of academic eligibility grants student-athletes a redshirt season that they can take, allowing them an additional year before competing in collegiate matches. Student-athletes whose season was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic earned an extra year of academic eligibility by the NCAA, granted six years to play four total athletic seasons.
Rising was a four-star recruit in 2018. He committed to Texas and spent his first year with the Longhorns redshirting. When Rising wanted out, he transferred to Utah, looking to be the Utes’ starting quarterback. However, transfers were forced to sit out the subsequent year up until the NCAA’s Division I Council changed the rule on April 4, 2024, allowing transfers to play the ensuing season.
Rising finally got his number called after being required to ride the bench in 2019. He was set to start for Utah in 2020. The Utes only played five games, and Rising didn’t finish one, suffering a shoulder injury in the team’s opener against Southern California. But Rising’s shoulder injury actually earned him an extra year of eligibility. How?
If an athlete suffers a season-ending injury or sickness before participating in more than 30% of team competitions and before the season’s halfway mark, they can petitition for another year of eligiblity. For Rising, the timing of his shoulder injury ended up being a blessing in disguise.
But when Rising actually got to play, he was productive. He led Utah to the program’s first-ever Pac-12 Championships, back-to-back in 2021 and 2022. Rising led the Utes to the 2023 Rose Bowl, where he tore his ACL. He missed the entire 2023 season with another medical redshirt year.
Rising suffered a lacerated finger on his throwing hand this season in a 23-12 win over Baylor, Utah’s second game of the season. After Rising returned in a 27-19 loss to Arizona State, he injured his throwing hand. Rising pulled out of the rest of the 2024 campaign, saving his medical redshirt year at the 11th hour and potentially granting him an eighth year of academic eligibility.
“Seven is good enough for me,” Rising said at Big 12 media day back in July. “But you never know. The cards are always on the table.”
Rising’s fate could be sealed in 2025, but whether the NCAA will give him an eighth year of eligibility remains to be seen. Student-athletes must request medical redshirts; they aren’t guaranteed just because they fit the criteria. The NCAA individually reviews each request to determine whether a player will be awarded the medical redshirt season.
McCormick’s circumstances are very similar to Rising’s. McCormick first arrived at Oregon as a three-star recruit in 2016, opting to redshirt during his first year. He appeared in 13 games for the Ducks in 2017. In the 2018 season opener against Bowling Green, McCormick suffered a broken fibula and tore a ligament in his left ankle. Due to surgery complications, he was held to only three contests in 2019 and was held out entirely of the 2020 campaign.
Two games into his 2021 comeback season, McCormick suffered a torn Achilles tendon. The NCAA granted him a ninth year of eligibility, making 2024 McCormick’s farewell tour. He transferred to Miami in 2023 and caught a touchdown in the Hurricanes’ 41-17 opening week wrecking of in-state rival Florida to kick off the 2024 campaign.
Harrison’s situation is much more unique; he’s spent the last decade of his life as an MLB player for the Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins and Los Angeles Angels.
But how can a professional baseball player come back to college and be NCAA-eligible? Because Harrison didn’t go to college at all.
He signed a scholarship with Nebraska in 2014 before Milwaukee took him in the second round of the MLB draft. Since Harrison went straight to the pros, he had yet to tamper with his NCAA eligibility.
Harrison bounced around the minors before appearing in 50 games across his three-year MLB career from 2020 to 2022, where he hit two home runs. When the Brewers let him go for the second time in August, Harrison opted to hit the gridiron rather than hit for home runs.
He walked on as a wide receiver for Arkansas, catching two passes for 29 yards as college football’s oldest player in the Razorbacks’ Week 1 win over in-state FCS Arkansas Pine-Bluff.
College football can get really complicated really quickly. There are 18,518 Division I football players across college football’s 134 FBS teams. According to NFL Operations, only 1.6% of all NCAA football players ever make it to the professional level. Most of the complications in college football involve dealing with ordinary people: college students.
The NCAA’s eligibility highlights some of the sport’s quirkiest and most fascinating stories about regular people juggling their complicated lives with competing as student-athletes. It’s part of the reason why America is so captivated by college football and why the sport will always have an intriguing tale to tell.