COLUMBIA — Ready, Player One?
He’s been ready since January.
Rahsul Faison finally had the “should-be” prefix lifted from the rest of his “South Carolina running back” tagline on Aug. 25 as the NCAA granted him another year of eligibility. The back the Gamecocks imported to (probably) be their starter will be ready to go when the season begins Aug. 31 against Virginia Tech in Atlanta.
USC confirmed it on social media after Faison’s agent told CBS Sports. Faison did the same.
It’s been a long, long time to wait, Faison enrolling in January and practicing through spring, working out through summer and then getting an emergency waiver to practice in preseason camp after an NCAA rule kept him out the first day. A plan in July had Faison ready to withdraw from school and take his chances with going to an NFL training camp, but that was scuttled as all chips were pushed into the center of the table while hoping for a favorable call from the NCAA.
The only step left would have been to file a lawsuit, hoping for a 50-50 shot for a judge’s injunction to allow him to play.
The final document, a request for proof of Faison’s stay at Marshall University in 2019, was straightened out two weeks ago after several fruitless attempts (Marshall had a change in athletic director). USC sent it to the NCAA on Aug. 7. It wouldn’t have seemed logical for the NCAA to not know what it was going to say as long as it had all the paperwork, but that was hardly a reason to think positive.
Faison’s hand was finally judged the winner on Aug. 25 and the Gamecocks officially have an athlete who rushed for 1,109 yards at Utah State last season in their backfield.
“I applaud the NCAA for looking at all of the facts in Rahsul Faison’s appeal and making the right decision today,” athletic director Jeremiah Donati said in a statement. “He has been patiently waiting for this decision, and we share in his excitement to have one more year of eligibility and be a member of our football team this year.”
USC coach Shane Beamer said throughout the offseason that he, his staff and the university had sent and resent every piece of information the NCAA asked for, and it was getting extremely frustrating waiting for a response. Athletic director Jeremiah Donati chimed in, saying that other players with “circumstances that were nearly not as extreme as his” had been approved and Faison’s plea was “kind of an easy one, to be honest.”
Yet the NCAA was having trouble trying to determine when Faison’s five-year “eligibility clock” started and how recent legislation impacted it, if at all. It is an age of seemingly never-ending eligibility, but some players asking for extra years have been denied.
Faison graduated high school in 2017 and attended a prep school in 2018. From there, he enrolled at Marshall, but grayshirted, meaning his clock shouldn’t have started until at least spring of 2019.
Faison was enrolled online at Lackawanna College in 2020 but did not play football, then was at Snow College in 2021, where he was on the team but did not play, which could be considered a redshirt season that does count toward his eligibility.
He had another year at Snow, then played the last two seasons at Utah State. His journey fit what Beamer and Donati and seemingly everyone with the Gamecocks have stressed — he has only gotten to play three seasons of football and it would be unfair to deny him another.
Now he’ll play his final season with the Gamecocks.
Scott Hamilton contributed to this story
