The Big 12 has unanimously agreed to ban professionals from returning in all sports, the conference said Wednesday night.
The decision is in line with similar rules the Big Ten and SEC announced Tuesday, although the Big 12 is the first conference to include all sports. ACC athletic directors also met Wednesday, and there’s momentum for that conference to follow bans on NFL players, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
The Big 12 ban includes athletes who have declared for a professional draft and did not withdraw before the draft, athletes listed on a pro roster or those who have a signed a contract with any professional sports league.
The rulings come in the wake of two NFL players — the Cleveland Browns‘ Dae’Quan Wright and the New Orleans Saints‘ Zxavian Harris — leaving their teams with plans of joining Lane Kiffin’s roster at LSU.
Wright and Harris, who both played for Kiffin at Ole Miss, would return to college football thanks to a court order that is creating havoc throughout the NCAA by allowing athletes from the 2022 class a fifth year of eligibility.
Wright and other athletes from the 2022 class played four college seasons and went pro under the belief that they had exhausted their eligibility. The NCAA adopted a new aged-based model in June that grants athletes up to five years of eligibility within five years, but the new rules did not cover players who began their careers in 2022-23.
