Earlier this week, the ESPN headline read "Daniels sends cease and desist to LSU after Pickett given No. 5." In a nutshell, it appears that Jayden Daniels, former Heisman Trophy winner and current quarterback for the Washington Commanders (who beat the Miami Dolphins in yesterday's first preseason game), claims his now-expired 2023 Name Image Likeness (NIL) deal with LSU included ownership of his player number. That's fucking bonkers.

Per the 2026 NCAA® Football Rules and Interpretations, Rule 1 Section 4 Article 2 a (aka "The Game, Field, Players and Equipment > Players and Playing Equipment > Players' Numbering" or simply Rule 1-4-2-a):

All players shall be numbered 0 through 99. Any number preceded by the digit zero such as "07" or "00" is illegal.

"Shall" here means "must."¹ If players owned their own numbers, a team would run out of eligible players as they all graduated or, given how things have gone lately with enforcing NCAAF eligibility, aged out of competitive play.²

Teams may choose not to reissue numbers, inaccurately called "retiring" a number — the only place "retire" appears in the rulebook is Rule 3-1-3-a: "Immediately after the conclusion of the fourth quarter, officials will instruct both teams to retire to their respective team areas." Retiring a number is just a gentleman's agreement that the team won't reuse it.³ Gentlemen always reserve the right to stop being gentlemen.⁴

Since Daniels can't actually stop LSU from issuing a number, what Daniels (or his representatives and their lawyers) is really doing here is arguing that his NIL contract provides for compensation following a broken promise about whether LSU would do that. I haven't read it. Maybe it does. LSU has made some pretty foolhardy promises in recent years;⁵ this could certainly be another one of them. Maybe someone should make a rule about that.

¹ Rule 1-4-1-1 recommends numbers for all positions, but some rules explicitly define which numbers players in certain positions must wear. For example, Rule 7-1-4-a-3 defines who must be on the line of scrimmage at the start of every play: "At least five linemen must wear jerseys numbered 50 through 79." (Amusingly, when punting, per rule 7-1-5-a, you can use any numbers. So you could give away all but five of your hundred numbers if every play was a punt.)

² Rule 9-2-2e buys a team a little bit of extra time in this scenario. It explicitly prohibits team members from having more than two instances of any single number.

³ Wikipedia has a pretty fun list of "retired" college numbers here.

⁴ The Rules wisely includes rules about which rules can be ignored "by mutual consent of the competing institutions." Neither Rule 1-4-2 nor any of the other rules I quote in this post are among those.

⁵ In 2021, the school paid $17 million to fire head coach Ed Orgeron. Having learned their lesson from that, in 2025, the school paid $54 million to fire head coach Brian Kelly. Having learned their lesson from that, they are paying their current coach, famous shitbag Lane Kiffen, $91 million. Geaux Tigers!

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Those of you who were paying attention know that UGA was destroyed by South Carolina on Saturday. While the final score was only 17-6, the game was never really that close. There are a lot of reasons that Georgia played so poorly -- I certainly blame Mike Bobo, but you probably knew that already -- but what has earned the most attention is the loss of A.J. Green to an NCAA suspension.

NCAA rules are complex and the most honest of mistakes can affect the eligibility of a prospective student-athlete's eligibility to attend the University of Georgia or affect the eligibility of a student-athlete to compete at the University of Georgia.

The above quote is from page 41 of the Georgia 2010 Football Fan Guide. And it's absolutely accurate. The NCAA suspended Green, UGA's star receiver, for 4 games because he sold a jersey "to an individual who meets the NCAA definition of an agent." How was Green to know that the man (Chris Hawkins) who identified himself as a collector was also an agent? Telepathy? ("Yo, man, if you're an agent you've got to tell me!") If the jersey was Green's to sell, and by all accounts that's true, why is he being punished for selling it to the person who wanted to buy it? Don't think I haven't noticed your Communist strategy, NCAA!

At least this tragedy has illuminated yet another of the NCAA's byzantine rules for the casual fan. Green should have known better: even if the NCAA says that you personally can sell your jersey, the NCAA also bans anyone from buying it. Also from the 2010 Fan Guide:

You are prohibited from providing the prospect or the prospect's relatives or legal guardian(s) with any benefit of any kind before, during or after his/her enrollment at the University of Georgia.

Ahem. That's kind of a catch-all statement, isn't it? As I read it, that means that I cannot buy Herschel Walker a Zaxby's Bourbon Chicken Sandwich Meal or help Champ Bailey's grocery-laden mother across a busy intersection. I assume that it also means that I can't buy the jersey off A.J. Green's back.

It's not Green who should be punished here. NCAA, if you must use strong-arm tactics to ensure that only UGA and Nike can profit by selling A.J. Green jerseys, at least try punishing the real troublemaker here: Facebook, the portal that connected the evil agent and his unlucky prey. Facebook: the Gateway to Evil!

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