As Ole Miss and Trinidad Chambliss await a decision by the NCAA to accept or deny an appeal to an earlier decision to reject an eligibility request by the quarterback, an important court date has been set.
Separate from the appeal, Chambliss’ legal team has taken the quarterback’s case to state court in Mississippi. After filing for a temporary injunction that would prevent the NCAA from prohibiting the star signal-caller from playing for the Rebels this upcoming season, a court hearing date has been set in Chambliss’ case. The hearing will be held at the Calhoun County Courthouse in Pittsboro on Feb. 12 at 9:30 a.m.
In an additional filing on Tuesday, lawyers representing Chambliss — The Grove Collective founder William Liston and nationally renowned trial lawyer Tom Mars — argued that the standout Ole Miss quarterback is not going to receive a fair assessment by the NCAA.
During the 2025-26 season, Ole Miss filed for a waiver on Chambliss’ behalf, seeking retroactive redshirt for the 2022 season when he reportedly dealt with an ongoing battle with respiratory issues that required him to get his tonsils removed while at Ferris State. The NCAA, in its denial announcement, noted that rules only allow one redshirt year, which Chambliss used as a true freshman in 2021. However, his attorneys maintain that he only played three “countable” seasons and is entitled to one more campaign.
The NCAA further asserted that Ole Miss and Ferris State did not submit sufficient evidence to prove that a medical condition sidelined him in 2022. Chambliss’ counsel rebutted in the initial legal filing, citing testimony from Ferris State Associate AD for Sports Medicine Brett Knight, Ferris State head football coach Tony Annese, and licensed otolaryngologist Dr. Anthony Howard, in which the trio said the football player’s battle with chronic tonsillitis and other illnesses sidelined him in 2022.
As for Tuesday’s filing, the attorneys argued that the NCAA had intentionally skewed how Chambliss’ waiver request would be judged, asserting that college athletics’ governing body instructed staff to deny cases requesting additional seasons of eligibility regardless of surrounding evidence.
“Trinidad Chambliss and the University of Mississippi were never going to receive fair and good faith consideration of Ole Miss’s request for an additional season of eligibility from the National Collegiate Athletics Association, and that’s exactly what the NCAA intended,” the attorneys wrote. “The NCAA offers a ‘waiver rule’ for the specific purpose of granting an additional year of eligibility, and Ole Miss provided evidence sufficient to satisfy all of its requirements. However, the NCAA’s directives to its staff and committees nullify the waiver rule and render it illusory.”
The judge overseeing Chambliss’ case is Senatobia native Robert Whitwell, an Ole Miss Law graduate and former Northwest Mississippi Community College quarterback. While Ole Miss went to the NCAA to appeal the waiver denial, Mars argues that getting the case to state court will offer a “more level playing field.”
