Former Marine fights NCAA for eligibility
Former Marine Steven Rhodes was hoping to be a walk-on football player at Middle Tennessee State University this season, but the NCAA will make him wait.
Rhodes completed five years of active duty this summe, but was ruled ineligible because he competed in a recreational football league for military personnel in 2012. According to NCAA regulations, the rec league games are considered organized competition.
Rhodes told the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that the military league was not highly competitive and not even well organized.
"Man, it was like intramurals for us," he said. "There were guys out there anywhere from 18 to 40-something years old. The games were spread out. We once went six weeks between games."
The NCAA bylaw reads that "student-athletes that do not enroll in college within a year of their high school graduation will be charged one year of intercollegiate eligibility for every academic year they participate in organized competition."
AFter the NCAA initially ruled that Rhodes would have to sit out two years, Middle Tennessee appealed and the waiting period was reduced to one year. The school is seeking an NCAA rule change that would allow Rhodes to still play this season, saying it is simply an oversight of a regulation that was not intended to penalize military members.
"This is extremely frustrating. I think it's unfair, highly unfair," Rhodes told the Daily News Journal. "I just got out of the Marine Corps and I wanted to play. For (the NCAA) to say, 'No, you can't play right now,' I just don't understand the logic in that."
