NCAA to Incorporate ‘Five-for-Five’ Eligibility Model, Which OSU Team It Could Affect the Most

Five-for-five eligibility is coming to college athletics, and on the onset, it seems like a good thing.

The NCAA Division-I Cabinet unanimously approved the five-year, age-based eligibility model on Tuesday. With the new model, all college athletes will be given five years of eligibility to use over five seasons once their eligibility clocks begin. Those clocks start upon the initial full-time enrollment in college or at the beginning of the academic year following the athlete’s 19th birthday — whichever comes first.

So, essentially this eliminates redshirts and waivers. There have always been eligibility situations pop up in college sports, but since the pandemic gave athletes an extra year, you’ve just about needed a law degree to find out how many more college years an athlete had left.

This won’t apply to athletes who just finished out their fourth season of eligibility this past school year. So, when Ruby Meylan took to X on Tuesday to ask if she could get a fifth year, the answer is no — unfortunately for OSU fans.

The change will be effective for all athletes enrolling full time in college in fall 2027 or later.

Schools have the flexibility in determining whether to use previous eligibility rules or the new model for athletes already on campus. That even applies to student-athletes who will be freshmen this upcoming school year. So, it’ll still take a few years for everyone to be on the same eligibility model.

As far as Oklahoma State goes, to me this change will be most interesting as it pertains to David Taylor’s wrestling program.

Through two years of being the Cowboys’ coach, Taylor has built a room that is stacked with depth. But only 10 guys a season get to wrestle at the NCAA Tournament.

In the past two recruiting cycles (2025 and 2026), Taylor has added nine Top 10 prospects (across two years, so of a possible 20). And that doesn’t include guys like national runners-up Troy Spratley and Cody Merrill or All-Americans Casey Swiderski, Zack Ryder and Bennett Berge. So, that’s already 14 guys in search of 10 spots and there are other more-than-solid wrestlers competing for spots in the lineup.

Taylor’s incoming 2026 class had five Top 10 recruits (six if you count Jax Forrest, who joined the Cowboys midseason). Those five have the option of the five-for-five model or the old model. In a world where they could hypothetically wrestle in five NCAA Tournaments, if feels unlikely that all five of those guys will be in the lineup this year given the talent Taylor has returning.

The act of juggling eligibility has been made more difficult. Forrest, for example, might’ve taken an Olympic redshirt in 2028 on a quest to make the United States’ team. Then that college season, there would’ve been an open spot in the roster that someone who might’ve redshirted the year before could’ve stepped into. That process is no longer so simple because redshirts no longer exist.

Penn State is dealing with something similar. During the 2025 season, Tyler Kasak was Penn State’s 157-pounder. He won Big Tens and was the top seed at the NCAA Championships. Kasak took a redshirt this past season with PJ Duke taking over that 157-pound spot. Under the new rules, would someone who is the top seed at nationals be willing to burn a year of eligibility the next season? Seems unlikely, but it’s something these high-level wrestling programs will have to figure out moving forward.

Again, this feels like a good thing — streamlining eligibility and making it to where there aren’t 28-year-olds competing against 19-year-olds. Could there be some unintended consequences? Sure, but there are at least some sort of guardrails on eligibility after years of it feeling like the Wild West.