The head-turning news of Baylor adding 21-year-old big man James Nnaji, a 2023 NBA Draft pick, has reverberated around college athletics. It’s not just that Baylor is bringing on someone who was drafted 30 months ago, it’s also that he’s eligible immediately and could make his collegiate debut this Saturday when Baylor faces TCU in its Big 12 opener.
While a number of programs have taken the G League and international route to add players in recent weeks and months, Baylor paved a new pathway when it went to the NCAA and asked it to clear the 7-footer with more than four years of EuroLeague experience to play college basketball. Never until now had someone who was selected in the NBA Draft been approved to play college basketball.
As far as I can tell, no one had ever even tried. With good reason. The notion runs counter to the very idea of what the NCAA has stood for since its inception. But those pillars have crumbled to rubble at this point, and as we turn to 2026, the NCAA has but only a few rules left that might withstand any viable legal challenges.
Still, even if Nnaji’s case is allowable, that doesn’t mean it’s accepted. I reached out to nearly 10 coaches on Monday to get a grasp on how they felt about it. Most had no problem with Baylor coach Scott Drew doing what he felt he needed to do because none of it is impermissible and because other schools (BYU, Oklahoma, Washington, Dayton) have done the same as of late.
How Baylor landed ex-NBA pick James Nnaji and what coaches are saying about the controversial acquisition
Kyle Boone
Most of the coaches got back to me relatively quickly, but the most notable of them all didn’t respond until Monday night.
It just so happens to be the man who’s arguably the face of college basketball.
I asked Dan Hurley for his thoughts on the situation at Baylor and the state of college hoops as it sees its rostering rules updated almost by the week. The UConn coach left me a nearly three-minute long voice memo, and instead of chopping up all the quotes and dispersing them throughout the story, I want to present what he said in full, as it paints a clear picture of what college basketball needs right now, but also the intentions and heart of a lot of coaches.
Here’s Hurley to CBS Sports:
“I would just say with the players, obviously with all the G League (guys), I just had no idea that that was even an option. I thought it was actually a joke when I saw it. I just assumed that when you stay in the draft or you get drafted that you would forgo your college eligibility. I was not aware of the loopholes in it. My biggest thing I would say is, listen, player empowerment’s great. Players have to do what they can to make sure that they’re doing what’s in their best interest. They’re taking advantage of those opportunities now with NIL and the portal. The coaches are obviously always gonna do what’s in their best interest if they can grab a player from somewhere. It’s gone on forever. Coaches have cheated in recruiting for years. They’ve paid players. I mean, the coaches are gonna find ways to make their team the best they can be.
But I would say my biggest thing is: who’s looking out for the shield, the college basketball (shield)? Who’s protecting college basketball, one of the most special things we have in sports. College basketball, March Madness, the second biggest annual sporting event every year. We need a commissioner. We need rules, we need guidelines.
The frustrating part is we all are willing to adapt and play this new game in this new era of, I guess college sports, or whether it’s G League — I don’t know what we’re in exactly right now — but it’s a frustrating game to play when you don’t know the rules and rules are being made up as you go and there’s no communication and there’s no leadership. So, I think college basketball needs a commissioner. A (Roger) Goodell. A David Stern. Somebody that’s gonna make decisions and start making moves that are in the best interest of college basketball, not just having coaches and players do what’s in the best interest of them.”
Hurley understandably is on the receiving end of a lot of criticism for his sideline behavior at times, or what he’ll say at a postgame press conference. But in my experience, I find his passion and devotion to college basketball as earnest and large as any coach in the game. This is a guy who could have left UConn after back-to-back titles, when he was on a throne at the mountaintop of the sport, to take the Lakers job.
He could have left NIL and the portal and the mangled mess of policies and non-policies that have plagued college basketball and the NCAA more and more and more in recent years.
But he stayed at UConn. He stayed for a lot of reasons. High on that list of reasons is his belief that college basketball is a great American sport. There is a spirit to the game that is unmatched. Hurley believes media companies and even many of the coaches themselves have failed at properly marketing college basketball in the past five, 10, 15 years.
He wants more for it. He wants it to be better. Believes it can and should be.
His pitch for a commissioner isn’t new. It might not be practical. But read his statement again and understand that he’s just asking for real guidance and real leadership. College basketball and college football need collective bargaining as soon as possible, but don’t let the hope of that stop from the progress that other steps — like having more open dialogue and — can do for college basketball.
When a former NBA pick can make the choice to play college basketball, that’s not the fault of the player or the coach. That’s the fault of the system and all the people who’ve failed it along the way. It took years to get to this point, and while Nnaji’s commitment to Baylor doesn’t threaten the very nature of college basketball, it is the latest event that is cracking the foundation.
A lot of these changes have pushed some of the biggest legends out of the game on an accelerated timeline. Now another one is sounding the alarms, and if real change doesn’t happen soon, Hurley and others could follow suit faster than they or anyone who loves college basketball would like.