Don't think the courts are going to go along with this one.
Now that there is NIL, the players are basically employees of the school. Suppose a player in is an educational program at a university and is playing on the team. The player wants to continue to play and the coaching staff wants to keep him on the roster. Can the NCAA (or anyone else) tell him he cannot continue to use his skills? Isn't that restraint of free trade or something? Five years of eligibility is totally arbitrary..
UMass DC Jared Keyes gives an update on the UMass defense at the start of Spring Ball. I recently re-watched the Missouri and Iowa games from last year. We were actually pretty competitive on defense. The downfall was being run over by the bottom of the MAC. The Minuteman defense was not FBS level in any unit. With a lot of new transfers, I hope we can improve.
New UMass QB Pop Watson talks about joining the Minutemen. We all hope Watson takes the reins of the program and absolutely runs away with it. Another year of swapping out three QB's would be very discouraging.
Hardy has a Power Four offer from Syracuse. Temple, UConn and Kent State have offered from Group-of-Five. Hardy would be a good fit in the new UMass offense and get an excellent East-Coast education to boot.
Harris is an agile big man in the middle and could be a valuable addition to the rebuilding UMass defense. He could find a home with the Minutemen in Amherst.
Besides UMass, Rust has offers from Appalachian State, Florida Atlantic and Georgia State. He could get an excellent East Coast education and join a resurgent Minuteman team in Amherst.