The one thing Tennessee Vols fans can say to quickly end any debate about Joey Aguilar being too old to play college football in 2026
There’s a decent chance that Joey Aguilar will be back with the Tennessee Vols in 2026.
There’s a decent chance that quarterback Joey Aguilar will be back with the Tennessee Vols in 2026.
Aguilar, who is seeking an additional season of eligibility, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA last week in Knox County, and the feeling is that he has a real chance to win.
Update: Aguilar was granted a temporary restraining order on Wednesday. A hearing is set for Feb. 6 to determine if the quarterback will receive a preliminary injunction.
The California native will turn 25 in June.
Getting Aguilar back would be a huge deal for the Vols after the program failed to land a top quarterback in the transfer portal.
Not everyone, however, is thrilled about the idea of Aguilar playing college football at age 25 this upcoming season.
ESPN’s Dan Wetzel, in fact, seemed to throw some shade at the idea on Tuesday on the ESPN College GameDay Podcast.
“You don’t want college athletics to have a 25-year-old quarterback who first enrolled at the City College of San Francisco in 2019,” said Wetzel. “Aguilar’s case will probably win — because he’s really just doing what (Diego) Pavia did last year. And you know, each one of these decisions leads to another one. So this is where we’re at with this sport.”
“There are rules in every league,” continued Wetzel. “When you’re eight, you can’t play in 7U sports. You can’t. If you’re (older than) 12, you can’t be in the Little League World Series.”
The easy way Tennessee fans can end the debate about Joey Aguilar’s age
I’m not here to argue for or against Aguilar’s case. College athletics are a mess right now — it’s truly the wild west. Everyone is simply trying to take advantage of the rules loopholes in place. It is what it is. And I’m not going to bore you with yet another idea of how to “fix it” (there are a lot of good ideas out there…unfortunately, fans have a much better grip on this stuff than the folks who run the sport).
If you’re a Tennessee fan, you’re going to hear a lot of noise about Aguilar’s age if he’s able to return in 2026.
I get it. But also, how is it any different than what Chris Weinke did a quarter century ago?
Now, I get that the circumstances were different. But ultimately, it was a similar situation. Weinke played six years of pro baseball before changing lanes and starting his college football career at Florida State at age 25.
Weinke won the Heisman Trophy in 2000 as a 28 year old!
(Ironically, Vols head coach Josh Heupel was the runner-up to Weinke).
What Weinke did was allowed by the rules at the time. If Aguilar gains another season of eligibility, it will be because a judge says it’s allowed by the current rules. The circumstances are different, but at the end of the day, Weinke was a grown man in his late 20s playing college football on the biggest stage possible (he won a national championship at FSU in 1999 before losing to Heupel and the Oklahoma Sooners in 2000 in the natty).
Weinke is far from the only one that went through a similar journey — former NFL quarterback Brandon Weeden, for example, was 28 when he was drafted in 2012 after initially playing pro baseball.
Again, the circumstances are different, but I’m not sure anyone on the field competing against an older player cares whether that player is eligible because they played minor league baseball or because they played a couple of years of JuCo football that didn’t count. A 25-year-old quarterback is a 25-year-old quarterback, regardless of what they did from ages 18 to 24.