From rags to riches, courtrooms and SEC success: Vandy’s Diego Pavia is still on the way up

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ATLANTA — Diego Pavia is a gambler.

He likes blackjack, enjoys a game of baccarat and loves to play some poker.

As it turns out, during his first-ever spin through SEC media days here Monday, he looked the part of a high-roller — donning a newly purchased and pressed tuxedo, silver wrist watch, gold chain and diamond studs in his ears.

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Pavia’s meteoric rise, from a no-name junior college player to a Bama-beating SEC big shot at Vanderbilt, is an example of college football’s great rags-to-riches stories (they are paid now, remember).

But his story does not stop there. True to form, the gambling Pavia rolled the dice last year in a landscape-altering lawsuit challenging NCAA eligibility rules. In the end, a Tennessee judge granted his injunction by ruling that Pavia’s junior college season should not count against his NCAA eligibility, allowing him to extend his college career by a year.

Without it, he’s not sitting here in this opulent hotel in downtown Atlanta in the midst of a daylong media circuit before television, radio and print reporters.

Despite the limelight and all, Pavia isn’t so different from that guy who set records at a New Mexico junior college. “I still do the nut-job stuff,” he says laughing, “but the cameras are on me now and so I’ve got to be cautious about it.”

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Before a sitdown with Yahoo Sports on Monday, he popped out earbuds and explained that he had been listening to a recording from one of his many interviews earlier that day to “make sure I didn’t say anything too dumb,” he says with a smile.

Pavia didn’t say anything dumb. He didn’t cause a stir. He didn’t inflame an opponent.

But what he did last December — the legal action against the NCAA — sure did. The suit resulted in the NCAA granting a waiver to extend the eligibility of those athletes in a similar situation as Pavia: Any athlete whose eligibility would have expired last academic year and who played in junior college was granted an additional season. The landmark Pavia ruling also triggered more than two dozen eligibility cases to be filed against the organization.

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“One day, we might see it as the Diego Pavia Rule or something like that,” he said.

In fact, a 27th such lawsuit was filed on Monday, this time from Sam Hicks, an Abilene Christian running back being pursued to play at Western Kentucky next year.

College eligibility standards — perhaps the most sacred cornerstone of the industry — are “under assault,” as NCAA president Charlie Baker put it last month.

To that end, Monday’s opening day provided a jarring juxtaposition fitting of an industry in tumult. As Pavia paraded through the media circuit here, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey spoke from a podium denouncing the assault on eligibility and highlighting its threat on high school recruiting.

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“We have to hold on to some values that are at the center of what we do at our academic campuses,” Sankey said.

A few hours later, one of the people responsible for that assault strode past that very podium and onto an adjacent stage, fielding questions from a hoard of reporters — one of the many unexpected stars of the league.

Weird? Uncomfortable? Odd?

Yes, perhaps.

But indicative of this murky, unstable and evolving era of the sport.

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea is a supporter of Pavia’s legal suit, and says it is important to understand “both sides” of the argument. Lea understands that a level of regulation — eligibility standards, for instance — is necessary to avoid the current chaotic landscape. But, at the same time, he says, “We’re trying to explore how best to take care of student-athletes.”

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“What should the college experience look like?” Lea said. “I don’t want to place limitations on what that can be. I don’t believe that solving these problems in the courts is the most effective way. I’d love for us to create a framework where we say, ‘This is where the game needs to go.’”

Some believe that framework involves collective bargaining, but such a move is incredibly complex, rife with legal landmines and probably years away.

However, college coaches and some high-level administrators are more publicly than ever supporting a collective-bargaining model, some even an entire employment concept untethering college sports from higher education. Meanwhile, their own commissioners and NCAA executives lobby Congress to prevent such a thing.

“How do you make a half-million dollars and aren’t an employee?” West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez asked Yahoo Sports during Big 12 media days last week.

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“I think you may even see the day in the not-too-distant future where players don’t have to go to school if they don’t want to,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham chimed in. “It will be like a true minor league. I think that’s coming. It’s sad to say.”

On one hand, conference commissioners, speaking often for their university presidents, want one thing publicly while their own coaches and athletic directors want something else.

It’s a weird, weird time. And it’s certain to get weirder.

“College athletics is not broken,” Sankey insisted Monday. “It is under stress.”

But Pavia has a solution, at least for the eligibility situation.

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He wants college sports to grant athletes five playing seasons over five academic years, as opposed to the current four-season standard. NCAA leaders have been exploring such a change.

Pavia also believes that junior college seasons should be treated as “prep school” and not count toward the NCAA’s four years of eligibility, which was part of his legal case.

“I know they’re trying to move toward five years,” he said. “A lot of athletes don’t get their degree in four years. A lot of athletes would benefit from being in school for five years.”

There is another benefit to remaining in college: money.

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In many of the eligibility cases brought against the NCAA, players are using financial offers from schools as a way to outline damages caused if their eligibility isn’t extended.

Monday’s lawsuit from Hicks, in fact, details a $100,000 offer made to him to play at Western Kentucky this season.

The eligibility issue has made its way to Capitol Hill, where the NCAA and conferences are in their fifth year of lobbying lawmakers for a federal bill that, in addition to other items, protects their rules around eligibility standards.

So far, the courts have sided with them. The NCAA says it has won 20 of 23 injunction decisions in eligibility cases in the last year, and the organization is appealing the three it did not win. Baker told Yahoo Sports last month that he “believes we will win those three” on appeal.

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Back in downtown Atlanta, Pavia is all smiles moving from room to room, the most dashingly dressed player of the day. The black tuxedo he donned is a new purchase. He bought it Sunday because he had “nothing to wear,” he said.

He tugs at his black bowtie and opens the black coat to show its inside lined with the Vanderbilt logo. “I had the coat but not the rest until this weekend,” he said.

The gambler isn’t here to talk about wardrobe or eligibility, though. He’s here to talk ball. He’s here to tell the world that Vanderbilt football is for real and that, even competing as a historic bottom-dweller in the SEC, the ultimate “prize” is attainable.

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What’s that?

“National championship,” he said.

Can he do the unthinkable? Can he turn this bonus year of his into a history-making run into January? After all, the gambler is playing with house money this season.

“That’s a good way to think about it,” he says before rebuffing the notion, “but no, I feel like I am in debt this year that I need to make more!

“I’m still down!”

This news was originally published on this post .