Weekly Rant: Joey Aguilar Has No Business Still Playing College Football

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“You know, lots of people go to college for seven years,” – Tommy Callahan

“Seven years of college down the drain …” – John “Bluto” Blutarsky

The idea of someone spending seven years in college used to be the parlance of frat-house comedies. Today, college athletes and especially, it seems, college quarterbacks are staying “in school” for six, seven … and, coming soon, if the University of Tennessee football program has its way, eight years.

Joey Aguilar, the Vols’ starting quarterback last season, has sued the NCAA seeking an eighth year of eligibility. If granted, he will be 25 years old when he takes the field in September.

Aguilar hasn’t had any of his seasons disrupted by injury — although he did have one year of junior college ball wiped totally by the pandemic. He’s also not a 25 year old who spent a few years playing minor league baseball and then turned to college football, as former Heisman winner and one-time UT offensive assistant Chris Weinke or former Vol receiver Kelley Washington did. Nor is he a 25 year old who served in the military and then turned to college sports. Nope, Aguilar, who graduated high school in 2019, has been on college football rosters and ostensibly going to class — until this semester — 6the entire time since.

Ridiculous. Excessive. Egregious. And, given the way other rulings have gone, likely.

This past week, Aguilar was granted a temporary restraining order. His case is slated to be heard this coming Friday, February 13, in Knoxville. Regardless of the outcome it speaks to the ridiculous lengths to which athletes are going to remain eligible, or regain their eligibility. It’s also exceedingly bad optics for Aguilar, the Vols football program, and the university’s athletics department as a whole.

To be fair, before the cries of “Vol hater” start showing up in my inbox, Tennessee football is not alone in this group. It’s just as ridiculous that Charles Bediako is playing basketball again at Alabama, after three years of pro ball and signing an NBA contract. Bediako’s future status at Alabama is going through the courts right now — after a judge who’s been an Alabama booster gave the initial ruling to grant him eligibility.

I’m all for college athletes getting a slice of the financial pie. I’ve been advocating for it, well, almost as long as Aguilar has been alive. I said it in 2010 when the NCAA suspended A.J. Green for four games in 2010 for selling his Georgia bowl jersey — his own property — while that same jersey was available for sale on the Georgia web site for hundreds of dollars. I said it when Johnny Manziel got in hot water for signing memorabilia at the same time Texas A&M was asking top dollar for boosters to sit at Manziel’s table for a dinner.

The whole notion of college eligibility is that, at some point, that eligibility ends. Giving athletes who were active during the pandemic a bonus year of eligibility was right and just. That five-year cycle is over. Last year, the Diego Pavia case led to a temporary — key word, temporary — waiver to give athletes who had spent time in junior college an additional year. Now. has a case to disqualify any and all seasons of junior college counting against eligibility for Division I football. A victory likely would extend that eligibility across all sports, creating situations where JUCO athletes regularly would get six or seven years’ eligibility.

At least Pavia’s current case takes a broader view of some sort. Pavia has already said he’s moving on to pro ball. Aguilar’s TRO is only looking out for No. 1. It’s not even about a victory. If the TRO gets upheld on Friday, Aguilar can play in 2026, and then once the season is over, his lawyers will drop the case.

It’s not just bending the rules; it’s contorting them. And most Tennessee fans seem fine with it, because they know that Aguilar helps the football team’s chances to win in 2026.

Let’s be absolutely clear here. If any other SEC school was pulling something similar, to get their quarterback to return for an eighth year, Vols fans and media would be roasting them — and justifiably so.

The fact that Aguilar is pursuing additional eligibility, and that Vols coach Josh Heupel filed a brief supporting Aguilar’s case, tells me that the Vols have minimal confidence in the current cast of eligible candidates to be QB1 in 2026: redshirt freshman George MacIntyre, incoming highly-touted true freshman Faizon Brandon, and Colorado transfer Ryan Staub.

How silly is this going to get? Do college fans really relish the idea of seeing athletes in their middle or even late 20s out knocking heads for their team, as long as it helps them win? Hey, I hear Chris Paul is retiring at the end of this NBA season. He only played two seasons at Wake Forest; I wonder how much the 41-year-old Hall of Fame candidate could command on the NIL market this summer.

Bediako should not be playing basketball at the collegiate level because he signed an NBA contract.

Likewise, Aguilar should not be playing football at the collegiate level because he’s had seven years already — that’s more than enough.

Instead, Aguilar should do what most people do when they’re done with college.

Get a job.