USC lineman DJ Wingfield denied preliminary injuction, remains ineligible for 2025 season

It appears as though the USC Trojans will proceed into the 2025 season without projected starting offensive lineman DJ Wingfield after being denied a preliminary injunction that would have allowed him to play this season.

It’s a huge blow to both Wingfield and USC as the parties were under the impression last winter and into March that the veteran offensive lineman would be included in the waiver the NCAA extended to players who had previously participated in one or more junior college seasons and whose eligibility had expired following last season. Several players who fit Wingfield’s same timeline of junior college and FBS playing seasons will be eligible to play this season, having secured that waiver or having courts ruled in their favor.

“This is another illustration of how inconsistent these rulings have been,” Boise State law professor Sam C. Ehrlich told On3’s Pete Nakos. Judges are very clearly disagreeing with each other on a particular legal issue, whether the rules are commercial, and it’s allowing some players to get an extra year and others not to, despite nearly identical relevant facts. This will be — hopefully — resolved in the next few months at the appellate level, but that won’t help the players who justifiably feel like they’re getting treated unfairly just because they unluckily drew the wrong judge.”

In other cases, appeals have been filed by players and the NCAA following these rulings, but at this point it would be surprising if anything overturned this and allowed Wingfield to play this season.

Wingfield played at El Camino College during the 2019 and 2021 seasons, played at New Mexico in 2023 and then Purdue in 2024, utilizing all four of his years of eligibility. Wingfield argued that the NCAA’s Five Year Rule as applied to former JUCO athletes is anticompetitive and violative of antitrust law, and requested a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction seeking to enjoin the NCAA from enforcing the Five Year Rule to bar him from playing for USC in 2025.

District Judge James V. Selna previously issued a tentative ruling denying the preliminary injuction and noted after Monday’s hearing that the “Court’s tentative will be the order of the Court.”