FSU QB Tommy Castellanos prepared to file lawsuit after being denied extra year, per report
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Florida State senior quarterback Tommy Castellanos had his waiver denied by the NCAA as he sought an extra season of collegiate eligibility, it was announced on Friday by Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell.
Warchant reported the eligibility news on Castellanos, who according to On3’s Pete Nakos has “hired legal counsel and is prepared to file a lawsuit against the NCAA if necessary.”
The On3 report followed the announcement earlier Friday by sports business attorney Darren Heitner that he has been retained by Castellanos. Heitner, who is a legal expert on NIL and teaches at the University of Miami about NIL, will represent the Florida State signal-caller in “his fight for an additional year of eligibility after the NCAA denied his waiver request,” according to his social media post on Friday morning.
Heitner said that Castellanos’s eligibility case is an overreach, believing that his true freshman year at UCF should count only as a redshirt season because Castellanos played in only 4 regular-season games during that 2022 campaign.
The 5th game that Castellanos played in that season came in the AAC Championship Game, which under current NCAA rules is now exempt from counting toward a player’s redshirt status. A 5th game is 1 more than the NCAA allows players to participate in to maintain redshirt status.
Castellanos transferred to Boston College for the 2023 and 2024 seasons before transferring again to Florida State for the 2025 season.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
