College Basketball 2025-26 season thread
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Centerpiece
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College Basketball Rankings 2025-26
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BillOfRights
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The Nnaji addition drew much attention because he is a former NBA draft pick, but he was one of many midseason additions across the country. The majority of those were international players. Washington added Nikola Dzepina from Serbia, Dayton added Sean Pouedet from a pro team in Belgium, Ole Miss added T.J. Clark, who played in the G League and played professionally in Mexico, and BYU added Abdullah Ahmed from Egypt, who played 54 games for the Westchester Knicks in the NBA G League. USC went the domestic route, adding Robert Morris transfer Kam Woods for the second semester.
How a 2023 NBA Draft Pick Joined the Baylor University Roster - Hoops HQ How James Nnaji, a 2023 NBA Draft Pick, Joined the Baylor Roster and Shocked College Basketball
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This was clearly Brucie's time to shine.
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As with everything with the NCAA, you have to wade through the euphemisms and double-talk to get to what they're really saying.
As far as the NCAA not claiming rev share as "pay to play", I saw something right after the House settlement was approved where an NCAA representative was making the case that rev share was simply returning some revenue to the athletes and wasn't outright paying them. The NCAA uses the term "direct financial benefits" to describe rev share, so they aren't really stating they're "paying" players at this point.
As far as amateurism, the NCAA revamped/eliminated a lot of their language around the term, but they still refer to "professionalism" as being against NCAA rules. For instance, here's a portion of the updated bylaws that defines athletic eligibility...
12.01.1 Eligibility for Athletics Participation. Only a student-athlete who meets the governing athletics eligibility legislation and interpretations is eligible for intercollegiate athletics participation in a particular sport. An individual who receives direct or indirect payment for athletics participation, except as permitted by the governing legislation and interpretations, is considered a professional athlete. A professional athlete in one sport may represent a member institution in a different sport and may receive institutional financial assistance in the second sport. (Revised: 6/6/25 effective 7/1/25)
The NCAA is still clinging to some version of amateurism, although they don't really define it and they largely view it vis-a-vis being a "professional".
Interesting that rule language still exists. My guess is it is easier to amend old language than just completely rewrite the rule book.
I certainly understand why the NCAA says you can only pay according to the rules. But calling all other pay “professional” is just odd.
It is like paying a woman to have sex with you but getting offended when people call her a professional.
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I guess it depends on how you pay...if you give her cash, it's bad, but if you buy her dinner and a fun night out on the town and maybe some jewelry, it's all ok.
superrific
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That's fine, but it's not really the same game any more. Once you have guys literally leaving the NBA to come back and play in college, it is just a minor league. Maybe it's popular and people like it, but it's different.
That's why I say the Duke/UNC rivalry ended with Caleb's shot. The teams still play; the fans can still be interested; but the dynamic of a sports program is just not remotely the same any more.
superrific
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Are there any limits to this? Could we ask Justin Jackson to finish his eligibility? He'd probably be a really good player for at least a couple of years. John Henson may be getting long in the tooth. Duke could ask some of their washed out early entry guys to come back -- Vernon Carey, Marvin Bagley (whose NBA career appears to be coming to a close, I think). What about that guy from KU -- Josh Jackson? Hell, I bet Ben Simmons could be a hell of a college player still.
Bigs23
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It's definitely different, not as good to me either.
It's now something I follow not something I live. It's just the way it is.
How is the 2022 version of UNC-Duke in any way the same game as the Larry Brown-Art Heyman slugfest in 1961? I'd say that the product on the court today is far, far more similar to 2022 cbb or 1980s cbb than 1961 is to those same time periods.
I mean, most obviously, the game is not segregated. Additionally, freshmen are allowed to play. Every game is televised -- just as it has been for the past 30 years. Coaches have been signing eight figure contracts for decades, which is the natural progression of commercialism that sprouted after NCAA v. Board of Regents in 1984.
As with all slippery slopes, it is extremely difficult to pick the one point on the slope in which the game has become categorically different. But if "amateurism" is your true dividing line, that idea went by the wayside with the $100 handshakes in the 1950s. Now, we are talking more in degrees than in kind.
Cbb has been minor league basketball for a long, long time.
I'm holding out for Lebron.
Bigs23
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Bron's going to Arizona to play with his youngest son.
superrific
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I'm not talking about the product on the court. I'm talking about the institutional structure, and specifically eligibility rules.
As you know, I think this antitrust stuff has gotten out of control, and I say that as someone who was generally "pro-enforcement" as a student and young lawyer. Sports leagues have to be able to set eligibility rules. And if the eligibility rule can't exclude someone who has played in the NBA, then there basically are no rules. Let's consider some examples:
1. Most schools now offer some varsity sports only to women. I don't know, let's take volleyball for an illustration (don't know if this is one of them but it doesn't matter). Can a male volleyball player sue the NCAA or his school to become eligible for THE volleyball team (since there is now one)? Even to pose the question is ridiculous, right?
In fact, I very much doubt such a lawsuit would succeed because of civil rights laws -- but did anyone ever think that the civil rights laws were partly repealing the Sherman Act? I think not. I think that the Sherman Act has never, ever required schools to integrate men's and women's sports. That eligibility rule was not a violation.
2. What about age restrictions? Can an AAU organization say, "we're going to allow players up to age 17 and no older?" Well, that decreases competition for 18 year olds, who might want to play AAU but can't because of that market segmentation. Just as stores can't divide territory -- i.e. I'll sell on the west side of town and you sell on the east -- so too sports organizations can't divide players by age, yes? Except that has never, ever been the law.
3. Maybe restrictions on player movement could be legit attacked under antitrust law. It would be weird, because every organization in America uses contracts, which are restraints on trade, and transfer rules are part of the contract between schools and players. But the contracts are standardized, and variation from those contracts can be punished by the national organization, so this has some merit as a claim. But the same is true for universities, which can lose accreditation if they deviate too much from the contractual terms expected by the accrediting organizations. Are all universities in violation of the Sherman Act?
4. What about the four years of eligibility rule? They also decrease competition. So maybe we should ask Mondo to come back and play another 5 or 6 years. If the NCAA can't prevent a school from getting a player to come play, why can it prevent a player from staying as long as s/he wants? But again, it has never, ever been the law that sports leagues can't limit the amount of time a player can play. In fact, the vast majority of sports leagues in the nation's history have recognized those limits, implicitly or explicitly.
5. Maybe the NCAA could establish (or re-establish) those rules, but has chosen not to for whatever reason -- maybe fear of continued losses in court, maybe donors suddenly like this new world, who knows. But the point is that the structure of the league has changed.
This isn't the same issue as segregation. Not even close.
6. This is also separate from amateurism. Sure, maybe players were getting unofficially paid. But they couldn't stay as long as they wanted; they couldn't come back after surrendering their amateur status, and they couldn't leave a team and join another mid season. Those are important limitations. "Amateurism" might have been some labor law bullshit that got elevated into a supposedly high-minded principle, but it did play an important function: it retained some level of "collegeness" to the whole experience. It meant that 99% of the players were between ages 18 and 23. If that's not allowed, then 8U leagues also aren't allowed and that's preposterous.
The limits on NBA players returning to school also created a distinctive experience for another reason: it provided continuity for the game. High school players would get opportunities, because they weren't competing against 28 year olds. You didn't need special training; you could play in high school, maybe some camps, and still play in college. College basketball helped make high school basketball attractive. And that, in turn, made youth basketball attractive.
But if colleges can make teams out of ex-NBA players, ironically this "pro-competition" stance would actually decrease opportunities for high school students. Fewer people could be college athletes, since the ones that did make could stay much longer. And it would make it really hard to go from high school to college; only the very best players could. The rest would have to go through an even lower level of minor league.
7. There are many ways to organize sports. In Europe, kids often join soccer academies at age 10, and certainly by age 15, they are more or less professional full-time players. That's fine if you don't care much about education. Soccer has long been a working class sport in England partly for that reason. Soccer is what you do if you're not so good at school but can run fast and dribble the ball. Like vocational training. Is that the system we want in the US? Maybe it's sort of come to that at the upper echelons of the most popular sports like BB and FB, but it doesn't have to be and surely for the non-rev sports, restrictions would be worthwhile.
I would say that there is no law in America, properly interpreted, that would make athletic success depend on educational sacrifice. Ever. Until now.
CarolinaFever
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I guess there aren't any limits as long as they are enrolled in school. Maybe some players that left early and didn't come back to get their bachelor's, or they could come back to get a master's if they graduated. Jackson probably has two good years in him still. How much is Ingram making with his two-way deal? Nassir Little is playing in Japan. Maybe UNC can pay him more.
As you know, courts will apply a Rule of Reason to almost all of the scenarios you posit above. One of the ways the NCAA has gotten in trouble in the past is by opening the door to certain things, but trying to limit how wide the door is open. For example, once the NCAA allowed grad students to freely transfer, it was very hard to justify not extending the same rule to freshmen.
The solution to all of your concerns is collective bargaining, which is almost assuredly coming sooner rather than later. Once a CBA is in place, it will largely protect the rules from antitrust attack. But until that happens, almost all rules are subject to a challenge.
superrific
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Has anyone given thought to what "collective bargaining" might involve? It would be a hell of an undertaking -- orders of magnitude more difficult than collective bargaining in pro sports. The idea that it's a magic elixir ignores what would be involved.
Just to take one example: what is the bargaining unit? Does each sport have its own? One would think so, because it would be nearly impossible for a union to represent all athletes in a representative capacity given that there are substantial conflicts of interest. In most labor unions, the bargaining units are "locals," which are fine because neither locals nor their employers are also responsible for setting all of the rules of the game. Pro sports have "global unions" that represent everyone.
How would you even go about making a global union for, say, college basketball players? The single union works in pro sports because all the teams are basically on the same footing. For the most part, every player could play for every team in some capacity. The teams have roughly similar financial resources -- to the extent that small market teams have smaller payrolls, that is in part by choice and anyway, the difference is maybe a factor of 5 in MLB and 2 at most in the NBA. It is one market.
In college, that's not at all true. Even if we limit to DI in our union, NCCU and UNC/Duke aren't remotely in the same ballpark in terms of resources. Their potential player bases have very little overlap; their institutional resources are wildly different; they have completely different TV deals. You wouldn't even think they were in the same league but for the occasional appearance on each other's schedule, and of course, they are in different conferences. How could a union possibly hope to represent both NCCU and Duke players in terms of rule-setting?
Collective bargaining might or might not be effective in setting compensation levels, but I find it hard to imagine that there could be any coherent process for rule-setting and I would expect the thing to break down.
There are only two sports where it matters : men’s basketball and football. I’d imagine there would be separate unions just like there are in nba and nfl. Also, the number of schools in the top 2 conferences will be around 40-50. Everyone else will be in the minor leagues.
At that point, the competitive balance issue will be more in line with pro sports.
superrific
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So the NCAA gets to violate antitrust law by fixing rules for volleyball? Why? And set eligibility rules for small conferences?