“Off-the-Charts Nuts!!!’ - Rich on the Trend of NFL Players Returning to Play NCAA Football

The last time most people saw Wright on a football field, he was catching a touchdown in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl semifinal with three minutes left, putting Ole Miss ahead of Miami. The pass came from Trinidad Chambliss. Miami answered, Carson Beck punched it in, and Miami went to the national championship game.

Harris had a couple of tackles for Ole Miss in that same loss.

Both men then declared for the NFL draft. Neither got picked. Both landed on NFL rosters this spring and summer. And both, it appears, are now playing college football for LSU.

"This is off the charts," Rich said. "Nuts."

The mechanism is a loophole with a courthouse attached. The NCAA adopted a new age-based model in June granting athletes up to five years of eligibility within five years, but the rules did not cover players who began their careers in 2022 and 2023. Sixteen football players in that gap went to a judge in Louisiana, won a temporary restraining order, returned for a fifth year and entered the transfer portal.

Waiting in the portal, arms open, was Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin got to the podium at LSU and beat the question to the punch. Multiple injunctions around the country granted players a fifth year, he said, and once they win and enter the portal they are available to recruit. "They're either going to play for you or they're going to play somewhere else around the country."

He also defended the players directly. "I think it's really wrong to be critical of these kids," Kiffin said, arguing a judge ruled they were wronged by the NCAA and should have had the fifth year all along, the way everyone moving forward will.

The detail that makes this land differently is that Wright was in a Browns uniform this past weekend, dressed and available, buried under the noise of Deshaun Watson getting booed and Shedeur Sanders playing well.

Todd Monken's reaction, given before anyone connected the dots, now plays like a punchline. He explained that Wright had a medical issue keeping him out of practice, then got cleared, so they dressed him just in case. Then: "I wondered why Lane Kiffin reached out a week ago. Now I know. I didn't call him back. Now I guess I should have."

Kiffin, for what it is worth, says he did not call Monken and found some inaccuracies in that story.

Rich does not blame Kiffin, and he does not blame the players. The NCAA created a rule in June that these young men would have liked to know about before making their draft decision, and then they found a legal path. He would have taken it too.

His sympathy runs somewhere else entirely.

"You know who I feel for the most are the players who are currently in their regular years of eligibility who might lose a gig because of this," Rich said. Picture the kid who worked all spring and summer for a starting role, whose NIL is tied to it, and who now finds out somebody just got cut in the NFL and is coming for his snaps. A guy who was standing next to Nik Bonitto three days ago.

The Big Ten is moving, according to Pete Thamel, with a rule barring players from returning from the NFL to play at its schools. Ryan Day, before that came down, said Ohio State would have to at least consider adding those players. "Do I like anything about it? Absolutely not. But we've got to do what's right for Ohio State."

Rich applauded Tony Petitti for doing something, expects a lawsuit, and noted the SEC issued a statement calling it lousy without telling Kiffin to stop.

Congress recessed before voting on anything.

His proposed fix is not subtle. The Big Ten and SEC make their own rules, create their own league, invite whoever else wants in, and tell everybody with a lawyer to pound sand.

And he admitted the hypocrisy up front. There is a bat mitzvah in his house Saturday, but not until the afternoon. At noon Eastern, he will be planted in front of a television in maize and blue.