Over the last few weeks, you may have seen people throwing around the phrase “5-in-5” regarding college athletics.

Today, we’re going to distill some of the key points and highlight what’s coming up next.

For a long time, the structure of college eligibility was simple.

Graduate high school → go to college → play four years → move on.

But that's not what college sports looks like anymore. Players take prep years, transfer, red-shirt more frequently, and most significantly, financial incentives have changed with NIL.

With the changing landscape, ,ore and more players are filing lawsuits to gain an extra year of eligibility now, and the NCAA is trying to solve that through simplifying the terms of eligibility. This of course comes with its own set of consequences.

Right now, most Division I athletes get four seasons of competition inside a five-year eligibility window. Once that clock starts, it generally keeps running whether you play or not.

The proposal being discussed would move to an age-based model instead.

This quote from an ESPN article summarizes some logic:

Under the proposed framework:

This is where it gets complicated, and where a lot of the frustration online is coming from.

The current proposal is not retroactive. Athletes who exhaust their eligibility under the current rules in the 2025-26 academic year are not expected to receive an additional year.

That's a tough pill for current seniors, many of whom spent their entire college careers competing against fifth-year players only to find out they won't get one themselves.

That frustration is legitimate, and it's been expressed publicly by a lot of athletes.

The working expectation is that new rules would take effect for the 2026-27 academic year. Current juniors and below are the first group likely to benefit.

For recruiting, the fundamentals haven't changed. Coaches still need players. Scholarships are still available. But the rules around how long your athlete can compete in college are being rewritten, and that affects recruiting timelines, roster decisions, and development paths in ways we're still figuring out.

The Division I Cabinet met in April without taking a formal vote. This means that it is not official yet. We know some current seniors in college are still holding out and hopeful that they may receive an extra year, though it currently seems unlikely.

The next meeting is May 22. That's the date to watch for the next update.

Coach Class and Coach Dunn

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If you don't manage your expectations, your expectations will manage you.

The players who struggle most in this process are the ones who expect it to go a certain way. They build their entire summer around committing by early September. If it doesn’t happen, it’s discouraging.

The most productive mindset is to expect it to go long. Be mentally prepared to navigate through a process of up’s and down’s. More often than not, that is how it goes, and that’s okay. Approaching it with realistic expectations helps to relieve the pressure.

A coach viewed your profile? That’s great, but don’t overly read into it. A college coach told your club coach they'd call? That's great… but sometimes, the call doesn’t come.

If you go into a marathon expecting it to be easy, you quit at the first wall. But if you go in knowing there will be adversity, you’ll be ready to push through it.

Matt

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Catching and throwing is one of the most basic skills as a defender, yet many don't fully know the proper way to do it. In fact, every single freshman defender at Maryland has to relearn how to catch and throw with the proper mechanics when they step onto campus.

In this video, Matt Dunn and Maryland All-American defenders AJ Larkin and Will Schaller walk through how they are taught to handle a longpole, including how to catch and throw and switch hands efficiently as high-level college players.

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