It appears a few Jackson State Tigers will be able to suit up in their upcoming game against rival Tennessee State on Saturday.
Jackson State defenders B.J. Washington and Kazarius Bowie previously had no standalone state court order protecting their fifth season. Their eligibility traced back only to Wisne v. NCAA, the nationwide injunction the Tenth Circuit had just paused. On Monday, Washington and Bowie, along with teammates Reid Pulliam and Tymon Wells, sued the NCAA in Hinds County, Mississippi. By Thursday, a chancery judge had granted them injunctive relief, temporarily stopping the NCAA from declaring them ineligible.
Four defenders, one recruiting class
All four plaintiffs came in with Jackson State’s 2022 recruiting class and were 2025 contributors on a Tigers defense that returns largely intact. Reid Pulliam, a linebacker, was a first-team All-SWAC selection last season with 74 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, three pass breakups, and a forced fumble. B.J. Washington, a defensive back, started and recorded 50 tackles, two interceptions, and six pass breakups. Tymon Wells, a defensive lineman, had 28 tackles, five tackles for loss, and two sacks. Kazarius Bowie, also a defensive lineman, played in 11 games with two starts. Under the NCAA’s old four-season limit, all four had exhausted their eligibility after 2025.
How they got here
The sequence runs through the same rulings this site has been tracking since early August. The July 31 Wisne injunction restored a fifth season to Class of 2022 athletes nationwide, and two of the four joined Jackson State’s preseason camp under it, with two more added to the roster on August 11. Head coach T.C. Taylor described what that meant in practical terms: “Those guys came in and participated for about a week, two weeks of camp with us. You had guys quit jobs in order to come back and play football.”
Then the Tenth Circuit stayed the Wisne injunction on August 21, and the players who had just quit jobs and reported to camp were, per the NCAA’s own statement, no longer eligible. Taylor’s response captured the whiplash programs across the SWAC and MEAC are facing this month: “These rules and laws change it seems like every 10 minutes.” Three days later, on Monday, Bowie, Pulliam, Washington, and Wells filed a verified petition against the NCAA in the Chancery Court of Hinds County, seeking the same fifth season the stay had just taken away, this time through a Mississippi court rather than the paused federal class.
What the judge ordered
On Thursday, the chancery judge granted the players’ motion and entered a temporary restraining order, the form the injunction took at this early stage of the case. In the order’s own language, the NCAA, including its officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, is “temporarily restrained and enjoined” from any action that restricts Pulliam, Washington, Wells, or Bowie from practicing, playing, or otherwise participating on Jackson State’s football team for the 2026-27 season, and from penalizing either the players or the university for that participation. It also protects Jackson State directly: the NCAA cannot treat the school’s compliance with the order as a violation.
The order is not permanent. Under Mississippi civil procedure, a temporary restraining order like this one lasts 10 days unless extended by the court or by agreement of the parties, which puts the current injunction on track to expire in early September. That is enough to cover Saturday’s season opener against Tennessee State in Nashville and Jackson State’s next game, but it means the players’ attorney, Erica McKinley of Jackson, will likely need to return to court for a preliminary injunction, a longer-lasting order that follows a full hearing, to carry the four through the rest of the season. The petitioners also posted a $100 security bond, standard for this kind of order under Mississippi rules.
What it means for the rest of the roster
The speed here is the story. Six days passed between the Tenth Circuit’s stay, which wiped out these four players’ eligibility, and a Mississippi judge’s restoration of it, well within the same week as Jackson State’s opener. That is the individual and regional filing path this site pointed to when covering North Carolina A&T’s Bryson Ogletree and Hampton’s Michael Eley, both of whom remain without a standalone order after their backup case stalled in North Carolina’s business court. Jackson State’s four defenders now have exactly the kind of state-specific protection Ogletree and Eley are still waiting on, and Southern’s Ckelby Givens, who returned to the Jaguars in the same window these Jackson State players did, is in a similar position.
For now, Jackson State takes a nearly full defensive front into Nashville. Data Driven HBCU will follow whether the Hinds County order gets extended past its 10-day window, and whether other HBCU programs pursue the same path for players still caught by the Tenth Circuit’s stay.
