Should NCAA athletes be allowed a 5th year if they stay at one school?

More than half of the coaches in CBS Sports' anonymous poll voted in favor of granting four-year players a fifth year if they stayed at one school

Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

There aren’t many college basketball teams heading into the 2024-25 season that are as old as the Gonzaga Bulldogs, who will likely feature six seniors in the rotation on opening night.

More specifically, Mark Few’s core features four players who are entering their fourth seasons — Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman, Graham Ike and Steele Venters — and another who’s technically entering his fifth season in Ben Gregg. Arkansas grad transfer Khalif Battle, who was a freshman at Butler in 2019-20, will be going into year six of college hoops.

While some of it can be attributed to how Few and the coaching staff built the roster, the recent uptick in upperclassmen isn’t just isolated in Spokane. All NCAA student-athletes who competed during the COVID-riddled 2020-21 season were granted an extra year of eligibility at their discretion. Some big names who utilized that fifth year in 2024-25 include All-American selections Mark Sears (Alabama), Hunter Dickinson (Kansas) and RJ Davis (North Carolina). 

While the 2024-25 NCAA calendar year is the final year of eligibility for all the student-athletes who competed during the COVID-19 season, the pandemic’s aftereffects are here to stay. New transfer rules and NIL opportunities have allowed student-athletes to change schools more freely without much penalty. In fact, the 2024 offseason saw the most player movement and coaching turnover the sport had ever seen all at once.

What if there was more incentive for players to stay at one school? In an anonymous coaches poll from CBS Sports, 53% of respondents said that players should get a fifth year of eligibility if they stayed for four years at one school — the other 47% disagreed.

“I think this is a very good incentive for stability on both the player and the team side. I would argue that they could use the fifth year at any school they want to after they've completed their four years at the one school. They put in their due, and it will give low/mid players the opportunity to make the jump to big-time basketball and money, and it would give a high-major player the chance to find a better situation or a fresh start, if they want it” - Anonymous coach who voted in favor of a fifth year.

"A guy should be able to transfer and still play as much as someone who didn't transfer. Don't think there should be a penalty for transferring or an incentive for not” - Anonymous coach who voted against a fifth year.

There were two interpretations of the question. Some saw it as the player getting a fifth year if they stay at the school they’ve been at for four years. Others saw it as a bonus year of eligibility permitted to any school but the player can only use it if they graduated after four years at one school.

The first option would pretty much guarantee that no four-year player could transfer if they wanted to use the fifth year of eligibility. The second option would essentially mean that every transfer cycle would feature a select group of 21- and 22-year-olds who are the only players on the market with four years of college experience, while everyone else is a junior or underclassman. According to CBS Sports, coaches would prefer the second option if such an idea came to fruition.

Gregg and Hickman would be the two players on Gonzaga’s current roster who fit the requirements for a fifth year of eligibility. While he technically joined the program during the 2020-21 season, Gregg is listed on the official 2024-25 roster as a senior, implying that his first year with the team did not count against his eligibility. 

Not so long ago, Zags fans had hoped Drew Timme would exercise his extra year of eligibility from COVID and return to Spokane for the 2023-24 season. Instead, the program’s all-time leading scorer opted to go the NBA route after four years of college. 

While a fifth year would incentivize student-athletes to stay at one school, it wouldn’t necessarily slow down the vast player movement across the sport. But that hasn’t seemed to hinder Few and the coaching staff’s ability to retain their talent, as the Bulldogs brought back seven of their top eight scorers from last season including four of the five starters.