NCAA appeals Chambliss injunction to Mississippi Supreme Court

• The NCAA claims the organization and its members will be irreparably harmed if the Ole Miss quarterback’s injunction effectively allowing him to play in 2026 stands.

The NCAA has appealed the February preliminary injunction granted by Chancery Court Judge Robert Whitwell in the case brought by Ole Miss and Trinidad Chambliss over the star quarterback’s eligibility to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Chambliss and Ole Miss challenged the NCAA’s decision not to grant Chambliss a sixth year of eligibility to play college football. Judge Whitwell found that the NCAA had failed to properly consider Chambliss’ medical evidence from the 2022 season where he did not play and that denying him another year of eligibility would cause “irreparable harm,” part of the legal standard required to grant a preliminary injunction.

The injunction barred the NCAA from enforcing its eligibility decision against Chambliss, effectively allowing him to play for Ole Miss in 2026, as the case proceeded. 

Now, the NCAA is claiming in their appeal to the state high court that allowing Chambliss’ injunction to stand will cause “irreparable harm” to the organization and its members. As such, the NCAA is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to overrule Whitwell’s injunction and expedite the ruling.

The NCAA says the trial court erred by concluding that it engaged in bad faith “by declining to assign weight to evidence that the NCAA’s Eligibility Rules do not require the NCAA to consider” and by “reviewing an NCAA eligibility decision for arbitrariness.”

“If courts can intervene in NCAA eligibility decisions to provide special treatment to favored athletes then the NCAA’s ability to ensure fair athletic competition in which all participants play by the same rules will depend upon the whims of trial courts throughout the country,” the filing argues.

Chambliss’ attorney, Tom Mars, responded to the appeal by telling ESPN, “Everyone remembers when the NCAA famously appealed to the Supreme Court in the Alston case and got their teeth knocked out by Justice Kavanaugh. I expect the NCAA to be spitting chiclets in this appeal as well.”

You can read the full petition for appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court made by the NCAA below.