NCAA reverses decision, grants Army war veteran waiver to play this season
After being denied the chance to play by the NCAA, Isaiah Brock can suit up forOakland this season
By
Gary Parrish
•
1 min read
The NCAA informed Oakland University on Monday that it has reversed an earlier decision and granted decorated Army veteran Isaiah Brock a waiver to play college basketball this season.
"We're appreciative of the NCAA initially awarding Isaiah with the ability to receive athletics financial assistance in addition to eligibility for practice," Oakland athletic director Jeff Konya said. "And we are even more thankful that the reconsideration has resulted in this decision for Isaiah."
This development comes 12 days after CBS Sports detailed Brock's story -- you can read that column here -- and explained how the NCAA initially deemed him ineligible based on the fact that he's technically a non-qualifier because of his high school grade point average. Problem is, Brock graduated high school in 2011. And, since then, the 22-year-old from Baltimore has served in Afghanistan, Kuwait and shown the ability to do college-level work while earning a 3.0 GPA in classes to date. Beyond that, he's already on Oakland's student-athlete advisory committee. And he has been mentoring and even tutoring other students since enrolling at Oakland in June.
For those reasons and more, it defied logic that the NCAA would want to deny any waiver related to Brock and his story when it's such an inspiring story. Konya told CBS Sports earlier this month that he hoped "common sense" would win the day. On Monday, it did.
"I just want to thank the NCAA for giving me the opportunity to play this year, and I also want to thank all of my teammates, family and friends for all of their support through this process," Brock said. "I'm very grateful, and I won't let this opportunity go to waste."
