The back-and-forth over the NCAA’s eligibility rules saw one of its biggest swings Friday after the collegiate sport governing body’s major court win.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 in favor of halting the U.S. District Court of Colorado's ruling that granted thousands of college athletes who were freshmen during the 2022-23 season an extra year of eligibility, which included Denzel Aberdeen.
"The Tenth Circuit's decision to stay the preliminary injunction issued by a Colorado federal district court judge in Wisne permits Division I to return to the status quo before the district court intervened," chief legal officer for the NCAA Scott Bearby wrote in a statement Friday. "Effective immediately, the age-based eligibility rules will be implemented as the Division I membership intended."
The Colorado decision came about because on June 23, the NCAA’s Division I Cabinet unanimously approved the five-for-five legislation: an age-based model that grants student-athletes a continuous five-year window to compete across five seasons. However, this model wasn’t set to take effect until fall 2027, leaving many college athletes entering their fifth year this fall out of the equation.
Now that the NCAA successfully appealed the Colorado case, Aberdeen is no longer eligible to return to college basketball at all.
However, this doesn’t mean that his case for a fifth year is thrown out the window.
Aberdeen, who played his first three seasons at Florida, transferred to Kentucky following Florida’s 2025 national championship. In his sole season as a Wildcat, the Orlando native was the starting shooting guard and averaged 13.5 points per game.
On April 10, Aberdeen announced his return to the Gators for the 2026-27 season. However, because he would be entering his fifth year, Aberdeen needs the NCAA to approve his waiver for a fifth season.
“It’s just a common-sense situation,” Florida head coach Todd Golden said April 22. “This isn't a 27-year-old trying to play his eighth year in college at his sixth different school; this is a 22-year-old within his fifth year clock coming back to get his degree. It would be a really weird stance to try to fight him from playing.”
The premise of Golden’s argument centers on Aberdeen's freshman season, when the guard played just 41 minutes across 12 games.
And now that Aberdeen faces a major legal hurdle, Golden and his staff will most likely take legal action.
In an interview with On3’s Joe Tipton on June 28, Golden said Florida was ready to take legal action for Aberdeen if necessary.
"There's a lot of things that are going his way,” Golden said in the interview. “So, we'll do what we need to do to make sure he's supported properly."
One of the things going his way is that Aberdeen plans on finishing his undergraduate degree in education sciences at Florida.
"The unique circumstances of Denzel's case, considering he's coming back to a place he started to get his degree, I think the right thing to do is to let him have that year," Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said June 12. "If he gets denied, I don't know what decision Denzel will make, but I think we would support whatever decision, whatever path he wanted to attempt.”
One path the Gators can take is to seek a state-level court to grant Aberdeen a temporary restraining order to counter the stay granted to the NCAA on Friday.
Last season, Alabama went through a Tuscaloosa court on Jan. 21 to receive a TRO that made former NBA G League player Charles Bediako eligible to return to the Crimson Tide. That decision sparked uproar within college basketball.
Aberdeen’s case is very different from Bediako’s, since he never played at a professional level. Still, it shows there is a route for the Gators to get their expected starting shooting guard back.
In a press conference on April 22, Golden said seeking a local judge was a last resort and that he does not anticipate Florida having to take that route. Fast forward four months, and going through a local judge might be UF’s only option to have Aberdeen suit up for the 2026-27 season.
Contact Jeffrey Serber at Jserber@alligator.org. Follow him on X @JeffreySerber.
Jeffrey is a summer 2026 sports enterprise reporter and a third-year journalism sports & media major with a media, management and production minor. In his free time, he enjoys hanging out with friends and family, and rooting for the Miami sports teams
