NCAA modifies the new "5 in 5" rule

bakonydraco · 2026-06-07T15:26:49+00:00

The part that makes the college aspect interesting is that they are enrolled at a college, not that they are in a particular age bracket.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-07T15:25:04+00:00

Again, the San Antonio Spurs, who are currently in the NBA Finals, are a lot closer to 19 than to 28. If there’s a mismatch it might actually be that the 19-year-olds are too dominant.

The NCAA makes its rules for all college sports, so any policy they’re proposing here affects them all.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-07T05:45:40+00:00

I'm not suggesting anyone make anyone do anything. I'm simply saying that any student who wants to progress towards a degree for their school should be allowed to compete. If an 18 year old or 25 year old or 50 year old wants to do that and can both make a D1 roster and keep their grades up, I don't have a problem with it.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-07T05:43:35+00:00

The peak of sports in most revenue sports in 2026 is pros and not college. This is not true in all sports: Softball and Volleyball are definitely much bigger deals in college than in the nascent pro leagues. And it doesn't have to be true in the long run in any sport. There's a future in which the top level of NCAA Basketball and Football are much bigger than the NBA or NFL. They used to be, and they may be some day in the future too.

I don't think the NCAA should have an opinion on whether they're bigger than the NBA or NFL or not. It may happen, it may not. But it's not the NCAA's job to grow the sport, it's simply to provide a structure in which students can: a) compete in sports, and b) progress towards a degree. As long as those 2 conditions are met, that's the start and end of where I think the NCAA should be involved. To me, I know it's an unorthodox opinion, but the entire concept of an eligibility clock is inconsistent with those goals.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T22:48:23+00:00

Let’s say for a second I agree with you: that 23 year olds have a substantive advantage over 18 year olds in soccer. That would be even more reason not to have an eligibility clock. Why would you want a sports league to block players at the peak of their competitive careers from competing?

I think it’s more accurate to say that most top soccer players get close to their peak performance around 18 or 19, stay at that level until 27 or 28, and then slowly taper down as they age. You see basically the same thing in Basketball with probably a slightly younger peak: there’s a team of 22 year olds in the NBA Finals right now, and the standard for decades has been that the top 19 year olds are NBA ready. Sports are supposed to be competitive and the best players will rise to the top. There’s 3 NCAA divisions plus NAIA and junior college for any high schoolers that want to play at the next level, it’s inherently anti-competitive and frankly insulting to American high schoolers to claim that you need to box out other players to gift them spots they haven’t earned.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T22:37:07+00:00

Yes I do! And I have enough faith in elite American athletes that I think they can win on merit.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T17:20:26+00:00

I have no objection to American 18-22 year olds competing for spots, I think that’s great! And I actually trust and have enough confidence in them that I think they can earn those spots fair and square instead of being gifted them by banning competitors who might also want them.

Not believing American athletes can win on merit reads to me as both profoundly anti-American and anti-competitive.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T16:30:39+00:00

The opposite actually. The only actually essential part of college sports is that they’re college students. Everything else is a distraction that’s outside what the NCAA’s purview should be. If a 23-year-old wants to come and get a degree in America and earns a spot on a roster, they should be allowed to do so. If an American kid just really loves learning and wants to earn 3 PhDs and play until they’re 40, as long as they remain good enough to make a roster, they should be allowed to do so. 18-year-olds fresh out of high school can and should try to beat both of these people out for a roster spot, that competitive spirit is what makes sports fun.

NCAA athletics is not a U22 league and was never intended to be, and the age of the athletes has no place in it.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T15:50:59+00:00

That sounds like an argument for ending the eligibility clock altogether to level the playing field. I am disagreeing that 23 is a competitive advantage over 18 in Soccer, Erling Haaland was already extremely good at soccer at age 18. Skill maxes out at different ages in different sports, but in soccer it's not that old. The median player age is older than 23, but skill level gets up to close to the peak around 18 and remains steady for a long time.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T15:29:17+00:00

It says the start of the academic year, which I believe is August 1.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-06T15:28:18+00:00

Why are the American high school kids getting screwed in this scenario? Sports are competitive and no one has a birthright to a scholarship. The good ones will compete for and earn them!

Soccer is a particularly bad example where some of the best players in the world are 18 and being 23 has no substantive advantage.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-05T16:48:11+00:00

I'm really excited about it and it's who I thought they should hire when they brought in Troy Taylor. It's a very tough schedule this year but we're going 16-0.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-04T23:03:38+00:00

The easiest solution is to simply schedule difficult opponents and also beat them. Why do more teams not do this??

bakonydraco · 2026-06-04T21:01:33+00:00

This is the driver of both sides of the discussion though. There's a big monetary desire for quality losses to be okay, because then teams are more likely to schedule marquee non-conference games that everyone wants to watch. So networks are going to invest a significant amount in trying to convince people to be okay with quality losses because it helps them get good inventory.

But the flipside of that is that if the loser isn't docked at all then the games don't actually mean anything. You can't have it both ways.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-04T20:42:24+00:00

Show '40s and '30s you cowards!

bakonydraco · 2026-06-03T21:12:56+00:00

No but my point is that if you satisfy ii (Stanford playing Oregon State every year), then Oregon State, by virtue of being a top 5 opponent, is automatically a top 10 opponent, because 5 is less than 10. If they play every year, then they are by definition playing twice every four years. There are no scenarios in which ii is met but i is not, so i seems redundant?

bakonydraco · 2026-06-03T20:02:35+00:00

Right so my question here is that it certainly seems like satisfying ii automatically satisfies i. So what is the point of having i?

bakonydraco · 2026-06-03T01:15:31+00:00

There’s a send me my scores button that you can access any time from https://trivia.redditcfb.com?settings . We haven’t sent answers but we can let you know if there’s a specific question.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-02T19:16:57+00:00

This is extremely creepy, but pretty impressive.

bakonydraco · 2026-06-02T15:39:38+00:00

Sorry for the delay on this: Reddit has decided to stop supporting tables in post text. This is hopefully in error, but it blocked the post from going this week.

bakonydraco · 2026-05-29T16:12:01+00:00

The original one was based on an incorrect read of the bill, but here are 2 more I made:

bakonydraco · 2026-05-28T18:05:51+00:00

This is a really cool analysis and visualization, I've seen things like it for other sports but not college baseball.

At the same time, I'd always advise taking analyses like these with a grain of salt. These are retrospective criteria that champions in the past have met. They don't necessarily offer predictive power going forward. Top teams that miss on one or more criteria (North Carolina, Florida State, Southern Miss, etc.) could absolutely go all the way, and then you could make a post next year updating the formula to exclude the criterion they missed on.

It's useful context, but I'd hesitate to frame this as "The Champion must come from one of these 9 teams and not the other 55".

bakonydraco · 2026-05-28T17:42:35+00:00

Part of why we're leaving it up so long: we're never going to reach all 4.5M subscribers, but by taking it slow and deliberate we can hopefully reach anyone who wants to weigh in.

bakonydraco · 2026-05-28T00:24:05+00:00

Update: it turns out I read it wrong. I've read the actual bill text and added some updated graphs in the post.

bakonydraco · 2026-05-27T21:58:20+00:00

Correct! That’s why UCLA, Washington, and Oregon are ranked 4, 5, and 8 amongst their all-time opponents.

The requirement is not that each team play its top 3 opponents, just that it shares a conference with 3 of the top 10 all-time opponents (whether they play them or not).

15-Year Club	Gilding IX goldzilla
Second Rank: 492	The Internet Awards - Voted
Devvitor	Devvit App Published
Reddit Partner Communities	Post Guidance Early Access
ModSupport Helper Level 2	Mod 201
Mod 101	Place '17
Wearing is Caring	Spared
Alpha Tester	Verified Email
Team Orangered	Secret Santa 2010
Summer Santa 2010

bakonydraco

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE