Southern Miss running back Antwain Easterling has received an initial eligibility waiver, making the freshman completely eligible and available to play at Tennessee on Saturday.
“We knew he would,” USM senior associate director of athletics/compliance Jason Gray said. “It was just a matter of clearing up some stuff with his school in Florida.”

Easterling had been held out of practice for the last two weeks as paperwork was shuffled back and forth between the NCAA Clearinghouse, USM and Miami Northwestern (Easterling’s high school). Southern Miss finally decided to bypass the Clearinghouse by demanding an immediate decision on Easterling and freshman Deddrick Jones on Friday.

The Clearinghouse answered with an expected ‘no’ considering it had not finished its review. At that time, USM appealed the NCAA for the initial eligibility waiver. Jones was approved Friday as was Easterling today.

Gray was asked why the process took so long with the Clearinghouse.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” he said. “It used to be the Clearinghouse was a lot faster. This year has been the worst. It used to be the waiver was your last resort.”

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