Jamie Nye: U Sports fumbles away age restriction ruling

U Sports needs to come up with a clear excuse why it didn’t allow an exemption for 25-year-old football players to finish their year in 2021 after COVID-19 postponed the 2020 season.

U Sports didn’t listen to the football programs that unanimously voted to give players the exemption. Instead, it listened to its legal team, which thought allowing the players to play in ’21 could open up a challenge on football’s age restriction that came about a decade ago.

That’s the truth to what happened. Don’t believe the health and safety of the players that U Sports put into its original reasoning for not having some compassion for about 300 football players, some of whom had to find out on Twitter that their university football careers are over.

The age restriction rule could be challenged anyway and likely will see its way through the court system, a lawsuit that likely could have been avoided if compassion won out over any number of the lame excuses that came from U Sports on Thursday.