Rutgers safety Jett Elad will always have Thanksgiving week of 2025 to remember, no matter where his career takes him.
That’s because 24-year-old Elad and his attorney, Kevin H. Marino, have engineered a remarkable feat. The U.S. Court of Appeals for Third Circuit ruled on Tuesday that Elad is ineligible to play in Saturday’s regular season finale against Penn State. Hours later that same day, a trial judge, U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, restrained the NCAA. Then Friday morning, the Third Circuit denied the NCAA’s motion to stay Quraishi’s order.
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The net effect: The NCAA defeated Elad in a federal appeals court and held that Quraishi erred in letting Elad play this season, but Elad will still play on Saturday—and possibly in a bowl game should Rutgers (5-6) win.
Sportico has detailed Elad’s case. Elad was ineligible to play at Rutgers in 2025 because he had already played four college seasons in five years, and the NCAA limits athletes’ eligibility to four seasons in any one sport over a five-year period. Elad, like similarly situated college athletes in antitrust lawsuits across the country, argues that play at a JUCO shouldn’t count toward the NCAA’s eligibility clock. Elad insists this restraint financially harms him since, among other reasons, Rutgers helped him secure an NIL deal worth approximately $500,000 contingent on him playing in 2025. An additional season of college football would also help Elad prepare for the NFL. In April, Quraishi granted Elad a preliminary injunction allowing him to play.
But on Tuesday morning, a three-judge panel on the Third Circuit concluded that Quraishi erred in granting Elad an injunction.
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Writing on behalf of herself and Judges Stephanos Bibas and Thomas Ambro, Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves agreed with Quraishi that NCAA eligibility rules are subject to antitrust scrutiny, at least in the context of power conference college football which has become much more commercialized in recent years. She explained that college football players at power conference schools are part of a labor market where they can be paid through revenue shares and NIL deals, and thus whether denying them eligibility complies with antitrust law—which is focused on competition in economic markets—is an appropriate question for courts.
But Montgomery-Reeves reasoned that Quraishi erred in how he applied antitrust law.
Application of antitrust law requires assessing how a restraint on competition impacts a relevant market, which in the college football player context means how colleges compete to recruit, sign and, nowadays, pay players. Montgomery-Reeves wrote that Quraishi “failed to define the relevant market altogether” and “never made any factual findings regarding the market.” Quraishi appeared to use a market that drew from all college football players, which Montgomery-Reeves reasoned is unsupported by applicable law and facts.
Hours later on Tuesday, Quraishi temporarily restrained the NCAA from enforcing eligibility rules as to Elad until the NCAA shows cause why it should not be restrained from enforcing those rules. The move came in response to Marino pointing out that Teamworks Innovations, an athlete engagement platform whose data, the NCAA asserts, is relevant to determining the relevant market, had objected to a subpoena. Quraishi set a hearing for next Tuesday, which is obviously after the Rutgers-Penn State game.
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There’s a chance the matter will be moot by next Tuesday unless Rutgers wins, which would make the Scarlet Knights eligible for a bowl game, or unless Elad intends to sue to play another season in college. Elad’s attorneys have written that if Rutgers loses on Saturday, Elad’s college football career will end and Elad will dismiss the lawsuit as moot. It appears Elad intends to participate in the 2026 NFL draft. Earlier this year, Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano testified that Elad “is an NFL-caliber safety.”
On Thanksgiving, the NCAA petitioned the Third Circuit for an emergency stay pending an appeal of Quraishi’s temporary restraining order (TRO). In a 24-page brief authored by Kenneth L. Racowski and other attorneys from Holland & Knight and Wilkinson Stekloff, the NCAA rebuked Quraishi for “effectively reinstating a Preliminary Injunction that this Court just reversed on the same day.”
The NCAA asserted that Quraishi, a graduate of Rutgers Law School, wrongly issued a TRO “based on zero new evidence.” As the NCAA sees it, the TRO “will effectively grant Elad all the relief he initially sought, allowing Elad to participate in Rutgers’s last regular season game this Saturday and to continue playing in any bowl game” even though the Third Circuit ruled for the NCAA.
The NCAA’s brief further warned Quraishi’s TRO “flouts” the Third Circuit and that Elad getting to play takes away game opportunities for other Rutgers players “who are actually eligible.” In addition, the NCAA said other athletes’ attorneys might try the same playbook in hopes their trial judge will “believe it is appropriate to disregard” appellate rulings and effectively nullify them “minutes” later.
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Not to be outdone in working on Thanksgiving, Elad’s attorneys—Marino and his colleagues from Marino, Tortorella & Boyle—filed their own 18-page brief responding to the NCAA’s emergency motion. Elad’s brief argues that Quraishi’s TRO came only after the NCAA had a chance to provide input in a briefing schedule impacted by the Thanksgiving holiday and closing of courts. In fact, the brief goes so far as to claim that Quraishi entered a show cause order with a Tuesday hearing scheduled “based entirely” on an “off-the-record agreement proposed by” NCAA counsel. The brief goes on to insist Teamworks refusing to comply with a subpoena due to the company’s objections prevents Elad from addressing the alleged deficiency of his case involving definition of the relevant market.
On Friday, Third Circuit Judge Bibas denied the NCAA’s motion for a stay pending appeal. In a one-paragraph ruling, Bibas said Quraishi’s order “is an unappealable temporary restraining order” and thus can’t be reviewed. In many instances, TROs aren’t appealable in part because they’re intended to be short-lived. To that point, Bibas said the TRO issued by Quraishi “will last no more than the 14 days allowed” by federal rules.
All of this means that Elad will play on Saturday. If Rutgers wins, there’s a good chance Elad will also play in a bowl game, though that could hinge on how quickly the bowl game takes place and whether Quraishi continues to provide Elad a chance to play.
The NCAA therefore convinced the Third Circuit that Elad should not have played in 2025, yet Elad will play the entire 2025 season and possibly a bowl game too.
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In short, the NCAA won but lost.
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