KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar has filed a lawsuit as he bids for an extra year of eligibility that would allow him to play this fall.
The complaint filed Friday in Knox County Chancery Court in Tennessee argues that Aguilar should be allowed a fourth year of playing Division I football rather than having the years he spent in junior college count against his eligibility. The Knoxville (Tennessee) News Sentinel first reported on the lawsuit.
Aguilar played at Diablo Valley (California) Community College from 2021-22 before transferring to Appalachian State, where he spent the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Aguilar then transferred to Tennessee and completed 67.3% of his passes for 3,565 yards with 24 touchdowns and 10 interceptions this past season.
He also redshirted at City College of San Francisco in 2019 before his 2020 season was canceled due to the pandemic.
“Aguilar needs relief now, to know whether he should report to spring practice or prepare for the NFL draft,” the complaint says.
Aguilar is seeking an emergency temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction requiring the NCAA to permit him to play one more season for Tennessee in 2026.
Aguilar had recently removed himself from the list of plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia had filed in federal court. Pavia’s lawsuit had challenged an NCAA rule that counts seasons spent at junior colleges against players’ eligibility for Division I football.
Pavia initially sued the NCAA in November 2024 and won a preliminary injunction that allowed him to play for Vanderbilt in 2025. He finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting and helped Vanderbilt go 10-3.
The NCAA appealed the Pavia ruling but issued a blanket waiver that granted an extra year of eligibility to former junior college players whose situations were similar to the Vanderbilt quarterback.
“Despite Pavia’s injunction, the NCAA’s blanket waiver for JUCO players and the record-breaking successes of the 2025 season, the NCAA decided to enforce the JUCO rule again in 2026,” the complaint says. “It refuses to grant waivers, even on an individual basis, to any athletes who ask that their junior-college years not be counted against them. The NCAA has given no rational explanation for that disparate treatment.”
Although Pavia now plans to enter the NFL draft, he continued his lawsuit to assist other former junior college players. Norris’ complaint notes that a ruling on the Pavia case won’t come until at least Feb. 10.
“This sequence of events put Aguilar in an untenable position,” the complaint says. “He cannot wait much longer to know whether he is eligible to play college football in 2026.”
According to the complaint, Aguilar removed himself from the Pavia case and filed his own lawsuit in hopes of a quick ruling. Norris wrote that Aguilar has a spot on Tennessee’s roster waiting for him and that he could make about $2 million playing college football this year.
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FILE - Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar (6) looks to throw a pass during the second half of the Music City Bowl NCAA college football game against Illinois, Dec. 30, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — Israel carried out several airstrikes Friday on southern Lebanon that killed at least 10 people, while the militant Hezbollah group said it fired rockets and drones at northern Israel where two soldiers were wounded.
Israel’s military and Hezbollah kept up their attacks despite a ceasefire in place since April 17.
Israel’s military on Friday afternoon urged residents of the Lebanese village of Habboush near the southern city of Nabatiyeh to evacuate, warning that those close to Hezbollah’s facilities would be in danger. An airstrike on Habboush that occurred around the time of the warning killed six people, including a woman and a child, and wounded eight, the Health Ministry said.
The state-run National News Agency reported that four people were killed in strikes on three other southern villages.
By Friday afternoon, Hezbollah had issued six statements saying it launched drones and rockets at Israeli military positions.
The Israeli military confirmed that Hezbollah launched an explosive drone that fell in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon. Israeli media reported that a drone strike near Margaliot in northern Israel caused a fire, and that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a separate Hezbollah drone impact in the area.
Friday’s exchanges came after paramedics in southern Lebanon recovered the bodies of five people, including a man and his three sons, from under rubble in the village of Kfar Rumman, also near Nabatiyeh, a day after they were killed.
National News Agency reported that the five were killed in an airstrike late Thursday on Kfar Rumman. The agency identified those whose bodies were recovered as Malek Hamza and his sons, Ali, Fadel and Hamza. It said the strike also killed a Lebanese soldier. The Lebanese army confirmed that a soldier, Ali Jaber, was killed in the strike.
Despite the war, residents have continued to return to homes in southern Lebanon after being displaced for weeks because of the hostilities.
One of them was Umm Ali Khodor, whose apartment in the southern port city of Tyre was damaged during the previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024 and again in the current conflict.
“We were displaced, we rented a house, but as you know the situation is very difficult,” the woman said. “We could not continue so we returned to our home.”
At Jabal Aamel hospital in Tyre, one of the few in the area that are still functioning, director Wael Mroueh said many of the wounded they are treating are people who initially fled but decided to return and take their chances in areas facing periodic bombardment.
The dynamic was “different from all the previous wars,” he said. Many residents left the villages surrounding Tyre in the early days of the war, "but a large number did not find places and came back.”
Many of the hospital’s staff are also displaced, and the medical facility is hosting them and their families to ensure that it can continue to operate. The hospital has enough food and supplies to last for a month, Mroueh said, and is relying on international organizations to maintain its supply chain.
Also Friday, a senior official with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies condemned the targeting of Red Cross volunteers during the Israel-Hezbollah war.
IFRC Under Secretary General for National Society Development and Coordination Xavier Castellanos Mosquera, who was visiting Lebanon, said that two Lebanese Red Cross volunteers have been killed and 18 others wounded by Israeli strikes. More than 100 health workers in total have been killed in Lebanon during the war, according to the country’s health ministry.
Mosquera told The Associate Press that Red Cross volunteers in southern Lebanon have described hugging each other before departing on a call “because they don’t know if they will return.”
He added that he had seen video showing “ambulances that were hit by bullets” while trying to rescue journalist Amal Khalil, who was buried in rubble when an Israeli strike hit a building where she was sheltering in southern Lebanon last month. Her body was pulled from the rubble hours later when rescuers were able to reach the scene.
The IFRC official also recently visited Iran, where he said key facilities of the Iranian Red Crescent Society had been targeted. Two chemical plants that had been their main providers of raw materials to produce plastic syringes and dialysis components were struck and destroyed. Another strike hit close to a Red Crescent rehabilitation center in Tehran that served children, elderly people and people with disabilities, causing damage.
Israel has denied that it deliberately targets health facilities and emergency workers.
The latest war between Israel and Hezbollah began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the United States and Israel launched a war on its main backer, Iran. Israel has since carried out hundreds of airstrikes and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, capturing dozens of towns and villages along the border.
Since then Lebanon and Israel have held their first direct talks in more than three decades. The two countries have formally been in a state of war since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
A 10-day ceasefire declared in Washington went into effect on April 17. The ceasefire was later extended by three weeks.
The Health Ministry said Friday that the war’s death toll reached 2,618 while 8,094 were wounded.
Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalist Koral Said in Abu Snan, Israel, and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
Sanaa Khalil, 35, a Syrian farmer who lost her two legs in the past days by an Israeli airstrike while she was working at a banana plantation, lies on a bed as she is assisted by a relative at a hospital in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Sanaa Khalil, 35, a Syrian farmer who lost her two legs in the past days by an Israeli strike while she was working at a banana plantation, lies on a bed at a hospital in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A domestic worker cleans a damaged bedroom in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Thursday, April 30, 2026 as the homeowner returns to the house. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Em Ali Khodor, 75, looks through her damaged apartment into a destroyed building that was hit few weeks ago by an Israeli airstrikeafter she returns to the house, in the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
