A prominent university football signal-caller is seeking an extension to his playing eligibility.
Court filings indicate that Chandler Morris, the field general who guided Virginia to an eleven-victory campaign last year, initiated legal proceedings against the National Collegiate Athletic Association in Charlottesville Circuit Court. He aims to recover an additional year of eligibility by petitioning a judicial authority to prevent the NCAA from applying its existing eligibility regulations.
Morris, whose career has spanned six seasons across four distinct institutions, contends in his legal submission that the NCAA ought to have awarded him a medical redshirt for the 2022 gridiron season, pointing to both psychological and bodily afflictions. During his tenure as TCU’s primary quarterback in that year, Morris sustained a knee injury during the inaugural game. Subsequently, he participated in three additional matches as a reserve player, experiencing psychological distress stemming from the injury. The NCAA rejected Morris’s request for an eligibility waiver in January, and a subsequent appeal of this waiver, submitted by Virginia, was also turned down by an NCAA panel comprised of university officials.
Morris, along with his legal counsel, is pressing a judge to issue an interim injunction, which would clear his path to compete in the 2026 football season. The timing of this plea is crucial. Should an injunction not be granted, Morris would likely declare for the professional football draft scheduled for April.
Should he be deemed eligible, Morris, presently a student at Virginia, might encounter rivalry for his position if he chooses to stay with the Cavaliers. The University of Virginia secured the services of Beau Pribula, previously Missouri’s starting quarterback, in January.
Morris, whose father is Chad Morris, the erstwhile coach for Arkansas and SMU, contributed to the Cavaliers achieving their highest number of victories in the institution’s history and securing a berth in the ACC championship contest last season. He guided North Texas to a postseason bowl appearance as their primary signal-caller in 2024, following three years at TCU and initiating his collegiate career at Oklahoma in 2020.
Morris represents the newest high-level conference starting quarterback endeavoring to reclaim a year of eligibility. His justification for a medical exemption bears resemblance to the case of Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, for whom a Mississippi tribunal decided favorably, granting a sixth year of eligibility on medical grounds pertaining to, coincidentally, the identical competitive season.
Chambliss asserted that an intense bout of tonsillitis—along with persistent indicators of mononucleosis and coronavirus—rendered him unable to participate in the 2022 season. The NCAA rejected both his waiver application and subsequent appeal, maintaining that the quarterback failed to provide sufficient concurrent medical documentation of his condition.
The NCAA rendered a decision against Morris based on comparable rationale, contending that neither the quarterback nor Virginia furnished adequate medical records from 2022 to justify the application. Within his legal complaint, Morris and his legal team elaborate on the 2022 season, during which Morris sustained a knee ligament sprain in the initial game. Following this, his understudy, Max Duggan, assumed the starting role for the remainder of the year, guiding TCU to an unexpected berth in the national championship contest.
Even though he participated in an additional three games that season as a secondary player, Morris’s legal representatives assert that his initial game injury profoundly affected his psychological well-being, prompting him to seek professional therapeutic assistance. Due to his state of mind, they maintain, he ought to receive an exemption for that particular season.
The litigation involving Morris propels yet another legal dispute concerning the legality of NCAA eligibility regulations into public scrutiny. Following the favorable outcome in Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s eligibility proceeding in December 2024, approximately sixty legal actions have been initiated by athletes pursuing extended eligibility. Over sixty-six percent of these filings concluded either with a dismissal or a favorable preliminary injunction ruling for the NCAA.
Nevertheless, judicial authorities in a dozen instances have awarded athletes injunctions, leading to a surge of subsequent legal submissions and creating a disequilibrium within the collegiate athletics landscape.
This matter holds sufficient gravity that the NCAA, in a minimum of two separate situations, has indicated its intent to invoke the “restitution clause” to penalize an institution retrospectively for knowingly fielding a player deemed ineligible by the NCAA, even if a court declares that player eligible. The NCAA’s restitution clause is only enforceable if the NCAA ultimately prevails in an eligibility dispute, thereby nullifying a judge’s preliminary injunction.
