Commentary: With no one running the asylum, college hoops has gone full crazy

At this point, we just have to accept it: College basketball is trolling us.

Right? What else would explain how this game keeps creating the kind of content that even parody social media accounts wouldn’t touch? College basketball has pushed boundaries so far that it’s only tangentially related to its amateur roots. The game is clearly trying its best to out-crazy the craziness of college football.

I see your graduated seniors suing for an extra year and junior college transfers who want eligibility for eternity, and I raise you James Nnaji.

Two years ago, Nnaji was a raw 6-foot-11 teenager out of Nigeria who drew comparisons to NBA big men Clint Capela and Mitchell Robinson. Since then, he was drafted in the second round by the Detroit Pistons, played overseas as well as in the NBA summer league – most recently with the New York Knicks – and apparently grown an inch. Soon, he will head to a college court near you to play for the Baylor Bears.

In new weirdness for college sports, an NBA draft pick has signed with Baylor. Though the 7-footer never signed an NBA contract or appeared in an NBA game, he has spent the past two years playing as a professional – such as when he matched up against Victor Wembanyama in the summer after they came out of the 2023 draft.

Wait a minute. What in the name of image and likeness is happening here? What happened to the days when players declared for the draft and abandoned their amateur status, leaving the college game to the next generation of young athletes?

Where exactly does Baylor’s signing of a grown man who has played professional hoops fit into John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success? And even more, who’s running college basketball?

Maybe it’s NCAA President Charlie Baker, who released a statement Tuesday emphasizing the NCAA will not grant eligibility to “prospective or returning student athletes” who have signed an NBA contract. “I will be working with [Division I] leaders in the weeks ahead to protect college basketball from these misguided attempts to destroy this American institution,” Baker wrote.

The way Baker made it sound, college basketball is experiencing a crisis. One thing can help: The NCAA needs to hire separate commissioners to oversee Division I football and men’s basketball. We need leaders who would bring clarity and install guardrails on these multimillion-dollar industries that are overflowing with media rights and marketing deals but short on good sense. These enterprises need enforcement because, as we continue to see, there’s nothing in place that will keep the stewards of the game, the coaches, from bending moral codes.

Wanting a college basketball commissioner isn’t a radical, new request. For decades – throughout his time at Duke – legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski called for the position to be created. In 2013, Krzyzewski said he thought a basketball commissioner, not the NCAA president, was needed to run the sport on a day-to-day basis. Seven years later, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Krzyzewski argued a commissioner would help craft a unifying message for coaches to echo on issues involving health and safety, society and culture.

Now, the necessity of a commissioner is clearer than ever. The unregulated transfer portal has shown so. As has the confusion over what is permissible NIL money and what is not, although an enforcement committee is supposed to be handling this. Specifically in the Nnaji case, college basketball needs to know who should be allowed to play versus who has given up eligibility. Krzyzewski is retired, so the current kings of the court are taking on this cause.

“My biggest thing is: Who’s looking out for the shield, the college basketball [shield]?” two-time champion coach Dan Hurley of Connecticut told CBS Sports. “Who’s protecting college basketball, one of the most special things we have in sports? … We need a commissioner. We need rules, we need guidelines.”

Apparently no one. Well, not as much as they should be at NCAA headquarters after they cracked the doors to this strange, new world. By loosening eligibility rules, the NCAA has allowed, on a case-by-case basis, former professionals to play in college. In September, the NCAA granted Thierry Darlan, who played two seasons in the G League, two years of eligibility based on his age and years removed from the NBA Academy in Africa, according to ESPN. Entering Tuesday, Darlan had appeared in 14 games for Santa Clara.

“The coaches are obviously always going to do what’s in their best interest if they can grab a player from somewhere. It’s gone on forever,” Hurley said. “Coaches have cheated in recruiting for years. They’ve paid players. I mean, the coaches are going to find ways to make their team the best they can be.”

Coaches, naturally, won’t point fingers at one another. Instead of straight up calling out Baylor’s Scott Drew for drafting second-round washouts into his program or mocking Santa Clara’s Herb Sendek for raiding the G League to win a few games in the West Coast Conference, their coaching peers all but shrug. Those in this fraternity see Drew and Sendek as just doing their jobs within the loose structure the NCAA has provided. What? You expect a basketball coach not to find every ambitious way around the rules, not to take a mile when given an inch? To not abandon integrity, that limp shell of a concept, on the side of the road while riding toward March?

“We really don’t have any organization or any real rules right now, and so guys are just trying to do whatever they can do,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few told reporters Sunday. “Until there’s a rule that says you can’t do it, it’s hard to blame anybody for doing what they’re doing.”

True statement, but it’s still weak.

Blame the system, sure. That’s the easiest route, because right now the system is a basically a building in downtown Indianapolis. The NCAA is a faceless bogeyman that lets anyone appear big and tough while taking shots at it. However, coaches can’t simply turn a blind eye to the greatest rule-benders among them. If any coach could throw money at former salaried players who list their previous college as “Delaware Blue Coats/NBA G League Ignite,” then why aren’t more Division I programs looking like pro-am rosters?

Believe it or not, there actually are coaches out there who still recruit kids out of high school in an attempt to field a college basketball team. Yet those programs, such as Purdue under Matt Painter and Duke under Jon Scheyer, still play the modern version of college hoops, with the presence of international players and reportedly high NIL salaries. So, yes, Painter might recruit and coach for today’s game, but even he’s as perplexed by college basketball as anyone else.

“You’re just kind of at a loss for words,” he said in October following the news of Darlan’s arrival at Santa Clara. “You don’t know what is next, right? Nothing surprises me anymore, I know that.”

Some coaches can’t be trusted amid all this crazy in college basketball. Some of them need to be taught how to uphold the values of the sport. And since too many of them keep playing fast and loose with the loopholes, this game could use a commissioner.