Last month, former NBA draft pick James Nnaji received a waiver from the NCAA granting him immediate four-year eligibility to play basketball for the Baylor Bears. While Nnaji is just one of a plethora of Division I men\u2019s basketball players to get cleared for the 2025-26 season, his case stands apart. The decision to let Nnaji play is not a routine eligibility ruling \u2014 it is a monumental decision for the future of college basketball and the NCAA itself.<\/p>\n
Nnaji, a 7-foot Nigerian center, entered the 2023 NBA Draft after playing professionally in Spain. He was selected by Detroit with the 31st pick in the draft before being traded to Charlotte. He was then acquired by New York as a part of the Karl Anthony-Towns trade, but he never signed an NBA contract. Despite appearing in the NBA Summer League, Nnaji has not played in an official NBA game or an NBA G League game, and he spent the 2024-25 season playing overseas in Turkey.<\/p>\n
Under longstanding historical precedent, Nnaji\u2019s career path would have disqualified him from playing college basketball. Historically, under the NCAA\u2019s “amateurism” model, once a player signs with a sports agent and enters the NBA Draft, they forfeit their amateur status and remaining college eligibility unless they withdraw before the early deadline. Granting eligibility to a player who was selected in the draft directly contradicts this precedent, and it cements the direction in which college basketball is headed \u2014 inching closer and closer to that of a professional league.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no longer college basketball,\u201d St. John\u2019s head coach Rick Pitino shared on X. \u201cIt\u2019s professional basketball with budgets that rival the Euroleague \u2026 Unfortunately, the game I\u2019ve been in for over 40 years no longer exists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitino is not the only high-profile coach to sound off on the NCAA for the Nnaji decision. Arkansas\u2019 John Calipari, UConn\u2019s Dan Hurley and several others have expressed their displeasure with the situation at hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho, other than dumb people like me, are gonna recruit high school kids \u2026 if you can get NBA players, G League players, guys that are 28 years old?\u201d Calipari said. \u201cWhy did [the NCAA] let that kid play? Tell us all, \u2018Here\u2019s the reason,\u2019 then we\u2019ll all go get pros.\u201d<\/p>\n
NCAA President Charlie Baker declared on X that the NCAA \u201chas not and will not\u201d grant eligibility to players who have signed an NBA contract or a two-way deal with an NBA franchise. Yet even that clarification leaves significant gray areas unresolved, and the entire situation raises a much broader question \u2014 how did the NCAA, once the most respected sports association in the United States, arrive at such chaos and uncertainty?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Think of the NCAA as a rulebook. In the past, this rulebook was rigid and unforgiving, usually receiving adherence from schools across the country. The association held significant leverage over national championships and competition, it controlled television deals and it had the ability to impose severe penalties under the amateurism model, such as when it banned the Kentucky basketball team for the entire 1952-53 season following a point-shaving scandal. The message was simple: follow the rules or get banned.<\/p>\n
In recent years, however, schools and conferences have started to question the association and the legal basis for its rules. That shift rapidly accelerated in 2015, when former UCLA player Ed O\u2019Bannon won a class action lawsuit against the NCAA regarding name, image and likeness deals.<\/p>\n
Since the O\u2019Bannon case, schools have realized that the NCAA\u2019s ruling means very little if it does not hold up in court. Now, when the association issues a ruling, the response is, \u201cWe\u2019ll see you in court.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Power conferences have now secured their own multibillion-dollar television deals, and the vast majority of NIL, transfer portal and eligibility rules that have been adapted in the past decade have come as a result of a federal court\u2019s ruling. Even when the NCAA does act independently, its decisions are drastically skewed by the looming threat of litigation.<\/p>\n
\u201c[They\u2019re] just letting it go because they\u2019re afraid they\u2019re going to get sued,\u201d Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo said.<\/p>\n
Izzo is right. It\u2019s hard to believe that the NCAA wanted Nnaji to play. More likely, the association chose to act preemptively, making the decision itself in order to save face. While choosing this route might allow the NCAA to maintain the illusion of control and authority, it raises an even graver issue \u2014 if the NCAA governs out of fear of losing in court, what power does it really have?\u00a0<\/p>\n
At that point, the association is nothing more than a glorified rulebook with no ability to enforce its own regulations.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lack of leadership is really shown and now it\u2019s probably time to get some help from Congress, but they\u2019re more screwed up than the NCAA is,\u201d Gonzaga University head coach Mark Few said.<\/p>\n
While Few may be joking about the current state of the U.S. government, his suggestion is nonetheless valid. Codification of NCAA rules into federal law could restore stability, as schools would think twice about suing the association and federal oversight ensures national uniformity, as well as checks and balances which the NCAA currently lacks.<\/p>\n
Still, in my opinion, the Nnaji decision perfectly represents the dejected state of the NCAA \u2014 a pathetic attempt to reclaim some of the power it once held, even if it compromises the integrity of the college game. The NCAA is fading from relevance, and if it doesn\u2019t come up with a solution soon, I think its days as a governing body are numbered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, former NBA draft pick James Nnaji received a waiver from the NCAA granting him immediate four-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,217,23156,7226,5785,6,12,66],"class_list":["post-540728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-draft","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-james-nnaji","tag-kentucky-wildcats-men","tag-national-collegiate-athletic-association","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115905241049121276","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}