Former Tennessee basketball point guard Zakai Zeiger continues to seek millions of dollars in damages via a lawsuit against the NCAA filed in federal court. Zeigler filed an amended complaint on Aug 4, citing updated eligibility rules and incorporating new state law, according to court documents obtained by Knox News.
At the crux of Zeigler’s amended complaint is a challenge to the NCAA’s evolving eligibility rules. The NCAA recently did away with the four seasons of competition rule in favor of new age-based eligibility model which eliminates redshirt years and allows all college athletes to play up to five seasons over five years beginning at their 19th birthday or college enrollment.
Zeigler’s previous amended complaint filed in December cited
analysis from Spyre Sports Group claiming that he stood to make up to $4 million if he had played a fifth season. If his legal team is successful, Zeigler would be due three times what he could have earned that season in damages – as much as $12 million – because this is an antitrust case.
Zeigler’s legal team argues in its latest amended complaint that, by replacing it with the age-based eligibility model, the NCAA has conceded that the four seasons rule he played under during his college career was anticompetitive and restrained Zeigler’s ability to earn NIL compensation in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and Tennessee Trade Practices Act.
“The NCAA’s adoption of the Age-Based Eligibility Rule is compelling evidence that feasible, workable, and substantially less restrictive alternatives to the Four Seasons Rule existed throughout the period relevant to this action,” Zeigler’s amended complaint states. “In adopting it, the NCAA abandoned the very restraints it long maintained were essential, replacing them with a five-year competition model it had previously opposed.”
Athletes who had already exhausted their eligibility were not grandfathered into the age-based eligibility model, though in multiple states, players who began their college careers in 2022 have sought temporary injunctions. Zeigler, a member of the 2021 high school recruiting class, narrowly missed that window.
In Tennessee, 17 players were granted temporary injunctions that would allow them to play this coming season. Former Vanderbilt center Jalen Washington, who committed to the Vols on Aug. 3, was among them. In Colorado, a federal judge applied a similar ruling to every athlete from the class of 2022.
“Since the COVID pandemic, NCAA athletes who began their careers in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, have been allowed to compete in all five years of their eligibility window,” the amended complaint states. “Zeigler’s class is the first during the NIL era to have their ability to engage in commerce truncated to four years”
The day before Zeigler’s legal team filed their amended complaint, lawyers from the NCAA filed a motion requesting the case be moved to the Middle District of Tennessee. It is the same district court that is hearing former Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s eligibility case.
Moving the Zeigler case to the Middle District of Tennessee, where the NCAA is already facing multiple lawsuits concerning college eligibility, could be one avenue for expediting decisions in cases that share common issues.
U.S. District Judge Katherine A Crytzer could hand down a ruling on whether to dismiss, move or continue the case in the Eastern District as early as this week.
Zeigler’s filings do not say he is attempting to retain eligibility and does not challenge the current five-year eligibility window. He is not trying to play college basketball again.
He averaged 11.3 points and 5.4 assists across 138 career games for the Vols from 2021-25.
Zeigler played overseas last year. He logged 7.1 points and 5.6 assists per game for Nanterre 92 in the French league LNB élite. He plans to play for the Hamburg Towers of Basketball Bundesliga in Germany this season.
Stephen Thompson covers Tennessee Volunteers men's basketball. Email him at stephen.thompson@knoxnews.com and follow him on X @stephenethom.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Exclusive: Former Tennessee basketball star Zakai Zeigler files amended lawsuit vs NCAA
