Temple DT wins court battle, now a free agent for 2026

Sekou Kromah's college career has been a mess of bad luck for two years straight, but he just caught the biggest break of his life in a New Jersey courtroom instead of on a football field. The Temple defensive tackle filed suit against the NCAA arguing his 2022 high school graduating class got screwed by the association's own rulebook, and a judge agreed with him.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Temple DT Sekou Kromah has been granted a preliminary injunction against the NCAA to play the 2026-27 college football season, his attorney @JocurLegal tells @On3. t.co/7ePmyqeJyu

The backstory matters here. When the NCAA adopted a rule this summer granting five years of eligibility to current and future athletes as part of the broader House settlement fallout, Kromah's class fell into a gap — too old for the new expanded window, too unlucky to get the extra year everyone around him seemingly received. His attorney argued that was arbitrary discrimination, and according to Pete Nakos, the preliminary injunction agrees, clearing Kromah to play the 2026-27 season regardless of what the NCAA says.

It's not just an eligibility win, either. Kromah battled through shoulder surgeries in both 2024 and 2025 that wrecked his snap counts, and he still put together a respectable two-year stretch buried behind those injuries. Now healthy and with a legal green light, the timing of the ruling could not be better for a kid who spent Temple's medical waiver request sitting in NCAA limbo since last year.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

As part of the injunction, Temple DT Sekou Kromah will be available to transfer ahead of the 2026 season.

That second part of Nakos' report is the real twist. The injunction doesn't just keep Kromah eligible — it also frees him up to transfer ahead of the 2026 season, meaning Temple isn't guaranteed to get the benefit of the fight it never had to wage. Kromah had already entered the portal while his case was pending, which puts him in the rare spot of being a proven, healthy defensive lineman hitting the open market this late in the cycle.

Programs thin at defensive tackle are going to be paying attention. Kromah is now a fifth-year-eligible free agent with SEC-caliber size and legal precedent behind him, and every school scrambling for depth before fall camp just got handed a name worth calling.