Stephen Daley, Kellan Wyatt stay eligible for Indiana

The NCAA went to the appeals court hoping to knock Indiana's 2 veteran defensive linemen back out of the lineup. It lost.

Pete Thamel

@PeteThamel

Good news for Indiana football and dozens of others involved in local eligibility case, which includes Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt. Indiana Court of Appeals did not grant the stay that the NCAA was seeking, which means they remain eligible.

Note the phrase "dozens of others." This was never just an Indiana football story. Daley and Wyatt are the faces of a Monroe County case brought by a group of class of 2022 athletes who were left out when the NCAA put in its new 5-year eligibility rule this summer. Miami basketball's Malik Reneau is also named in it. Monroe Circuit Court Judge Kara Krothe granted the group a preliminary injunction on September 23, which let them play the 2026-27 season while the case is heard.

Getting here has been a mess. A temporary restraining order covering the 2 linemen expired, and they sat out Indiana's 38-0 win over Western Kentucky before Krothe's injunction made them eligible again. On top of that, the Tenth Circuit had already given the NCAA a stay in the separate class-action case, which put a lot of class of 2022 athletes without their own injunctions right back on the sidelines. So the NCAA's playbook was obvious: get the Indiana injunction stayed the same way.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Indiana Court of Appeals has denied the NCAA's motion to stay the eligibility case allowing Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt to play for the Hoosiers this season. t.co/bky4D4i2I5

Pete Nakos@PeteNakos

The NCAA's motion to stay the preliminary injunction allowing Indiana's Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt to play this season has been denied, per court docs. t.co/BCGFTTT12B

Krothe had already shot that down at the trial level. She ruled the NCAA wasn't likely to win on appeal and hadn't shown it would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction stood. The NCAA then went over her head with an emergency motion to the Court of Appeals, and now that court has also said no. That's 2 straight losses on the same request.

For Indiana, this is about real football, not paperwork. Daley is a 5th-year senior from Winchester, Virginia, and his 19 tackles for loss in 2025 were 3rd in FBS. Wyatt is a senior with 35 career starts, and he had 8 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks last year before a knee injury against Michigan State. You don't want to be pulling guys like that off the D-line in the middle of the season because of a court filing.

The fight isn't over, though. The NCAA's appeal of the injunction itself is still alive. Losing the stay just means it can't get Daley and Wyatt benched while that appeal plays out. For now, the 2 of them are playing, and the NCAA has run out of shortcuts.