Judge grants Owen Heinecke injunction against NCAA, clearing path to a fourth season for Sooners linebacker

JASON WATKINS
HOF Media 

NORMAN, Oklahoma — Owen Heinecke won the biggest fight of his football career Thursday, when Cleveland County Judge Thad Balkman granted the Oklahoma linebacker’s request for a preliminary injunction and cleared the way for the former walk-on and likely team captain to pursue a fourth season with the Sooners.

Balkman ruled from the bench after a hearing that stretched through the morning and into the afternoon, concluding that the evidence clearly showed Heinecke is a third-party beneficiary of the NCAA’s bylaws, that COVID affected his recruitment, and that the NCAA failed to consider the totality of his case.

The ruling handed Heinecke and Oklahoma an immediate victory in one of the more unusual eligibility fights of the college football offseason. It also validated the central point Heinecke’s attorneys hammered throughout the day: this was not a request for a bonus year, but for the fourth football season they argued he should have had all along.

“We’re not asking for a stretch here,” Heinecke attorney Mary Quinn Cooper told the court in closing. “We’re not asking for a fifth, sixth or seventh year. We’re asking for a fourth year of football.”

That line became the heartbeat of Heinecke’s case.

Heinecke sued the NCAA after the organization denied an eligibility extension that would have allowed him to return to Oklahoma in 2026. The dispute centered on his 2021-22 freshman year at Ohio State, where he briefly played lacrosse before later transferring to OU and walking onto the football team.

The NCAA counted that year against Heinecke’s five-year eligibility clock.

Heinecke’s side argued that result ignored reality.

They contended he never had a meaningful chance to play football that year because COVID-era recruiting disruptions limited in-person exposure, wiped out camp opportunities, and changed the landscape for high school recruits just as he was trying to find a football path. They also argued Ohio State did not hold football walk-on tryouts until spring 2022, further undercutting his ability to compete for a football role, and said injuries compounded the problem.

Heinecke testified about trying to make himself available in a recruiting environment that had largely shut down face-to-face evaluation.

He also described how the extra COVID years given to older college players shrank opportunities for recruits in his class. With rosters older and more crowded, he said, schools increasingly leaned toward known college players rather than unproven high school prospects.

That environment, his attorneys argued, was not something he created or controlled.

The NCAA, however, framed the case differently.

Its counsel argued that Heinecke chose lacrosse, not football, at Ohio State, and that the key circumstances were therefore within his control. The NCAA acknowledged that Division II or service-academy football is not the same as Division I SEC football, but said those differences do not change the rule.

“The NCAA says Heinecke chose to play lacrosse, not football,” the organization argued in closing. “It was in his control.”

The NCAA also insisted the record did not show anything improper in how it handled the waiver

“There isn’t enough proof that the NCAA has done anything but apply its bylaws,” counsel said.

But Heinecke’s lawyers spent much of the day trying to show the opposite — that the NCAA’s process was inconsistent, rigid in his case, and far more flexible in others.

Cooper delivered the sharpest blows there.

She told the judge the NCAA claimed Heinecke failed to submit medical records tied to the 2021-22 year, but said 171 pages of medical records were in fact included in his petition and waiver materials. She also repeatedly argued the NCAA failed to view Heinecke’s circumstances as a whole.

“Was anyone considering the totality of the circumstances for Owen Heinecke? Absolutely not,” Cooper said.

That phrase became one of the hearing’s defining themes. In the end, Balkman’s ruling suggested he agreed.

Cooper also turned the hearing toward a newly surfaced NCAA internal decision from October 2025, involving a women’s athlete whose case she said was “eerily similar” to Heinecke’s. According to Heinecke’s legal team, the NCAA granted that athlete relief under a flexible totality-of-the-circumstances standard, but never uploaded the decision into the internal database member schools use to research precedent.

That meant Oklahoma could not cite it when it pursued Heinecke’s waiver.

Cooper openly mocked the NCAA’s explanation for the omission, at one point saying it had to be a “joke.”

She also challenged the NCAA’s description of the comparable ruling, saying the organization claimed the committee did not approve the female athlete’s extra season even though the player had completed that additional season just months ago.

In rebuttal, Cooper said the NCAA has shown “time and again” that it can be flexible, and questioned why it had not shown that same flexibility to Heinecke.

That argument appeared to resonate with the judge, who specifically said the NCAA failed to consider the totality of Heinecke’s case.

Cooper also argued irreparable harm was “absolutely undisputed,” saying denying Heinecke another season would cause lasting damage to both his college career and his NFL future. On that point, Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables and general manager Jim Nagy gave testimony that gave the hearing a football spine.

Venables was asked at length about the developmental difference between SEC football and other college paths such as Division II or military-academy football.

Respectfully but firmly, Venables said those environments are “dramatically different.”

He emphasized that development is driven first by practice — what a player goes against every day, the level of coaching, the depth of instruction, the resources available, and the speed and violence of the game. In his view, there is no true comparison between the day-to-day demands of SEC football and the alternatives the NCAA suggested had once been available to Heinecke.

Venables also described Heinecke’s evolution at Oklahoma.

When Heinecke first arrived, Venables said, he was dealing with a knee issue and was still learning how to play linebacker in a college system. He had athletic ability, but needed guidance, refinement, and time.

Over the next few years, Venables said, Heinecke earned trust, carved out a role and eventually became a starter over the final stretch of last season. More importantly, Venables testified that Heinecke was only beginning to become the player he could be.

“He’s just now scratching the surface,” Venables said.

He described the jump players often make from one season to the next late in their careers and said that, in his experience, the difference between a player’s third, fourth and fifth years can be more meaningful than everything that comes before.

“The game was just starting to slow down” for Heinecke, Venables said.

Another season, he testified, could bring a major leap in confidence, physicality, leadership and instincts. Without it, Venables suggested, the loss would be impossible to truly measure.

“It’s immeasurable what you miss out on,” he said.

Venables also made clear he believed the impact would extend to the professional level.

“Without question,” Venables said when asked whether another college season would affect Heinecke’s NFL process.

He described the NFL as “the most unforgiving league on the planet” and said players who enter it before they are fully ready can quickly get left behind. In his experience, very few players leave college after only three years and make an immediate impact. More often, he said, another year of seasoning, leadership and development makes the difference.

Nagy took that point and sharpened it.

A longtime NFL evaluator, Nagy testified that he had been telling scouts since August to start watching Heinecke and said another year would be a major boost.

“It’d be huge for him,” Nagy said.

“To have that bigger runway, would be huge.”

“The NFL tries to avoid one-year wonders. Owen’s a half-year wonder.”

That line may have been the day’s clearest summary of the draft case for Heinecke. Nagy’s point was that scouts have seen enough to be intrigued, but not yet enough to erase uncertainty.

Nagy testified that Heinecke projects right now as a fifth- or sixth-round NFL draft pick. But he said another season could dramatically improve that stock.

“He has a lot to gain coming back,” Nagy said.

Nagy said Heinecke is on the cusp of a significant jump and even suggested that, with another full season, he could play his way into contention for the Butkus Award. He also said he would be shocked if Heinecke were not one of Oklahoma’s captains next season, noting the respect he has earned inside the program.

The NCAA tried to counter that by arguing Heinecke’s return would necessarily affect someone else.

“Coach Venables says they play 6 linebackers,” NCAA counsel said. “Heinecke would be one of those. What about No. 7? I bet he’d like to be No. 6.”

But Nagy pushed back on the idea that Heinecke’s return would come at a teammate’s expense.

He said Oklahoma would carry a 104-player roster regardless, that the locker room would welcome Heinecke back “with open arms,” and that there had been no real indication of internal concern from the players supposedly affected.

“I have not heard from an agent from those other linebackers,” Nagy testified. “If it were an issue, I would have heard from them.”

That testimony helped undercut one of the NCAA’s equity arguments and gave Oklahoma a practical football answer to the notion that restoring Heinecke’s eligibility would unfairly harm others.

Heinecke’s attorneys also made a pointed football comparison with Nagy: had Heinecke played three football games instead of three lacrosse games in that first year, he likely would have been eligible for a redshirt. That line of questioning was meant to show how differently the NCAA treated the same player based on the sport attached to those appearances.

By the end of the day, Balkman sided with Heinecke.

His ruling means Heinecke can move forward as eligible while the broader lawsuit continues. It is a meaningful immediate victory, not just procedurally but competitively.

For Oklahoma, the decision potentially restores a veteran linebacker, emotional leader and likely captain to a defense with major expectations.

For Heinecke, it is the most important win yet in a case built around a simple argument that ultimately convinced the court: he was not asking for something extraordinary.

He was asking for a fourth year of football.