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Jay Bilas blasts NCAA's unprincipled eligibility rules after Charles Bediako ruling

by: Alex Byington02/17/26_AlexByington

Within minutes of last Monday’s ruling by a Tuscaloosa County judge denying Alabama 7-footer Charles Bediako an injunction in his eligibility case against the NCAA, NCAA president Charlie Baker hailed the decision as a win for “common sense.” In the same statement, Baker extolled the NCAA’s virtuous position in its ongoing eligibility challenges, declaring “college sports are for students” and not professionals.

But that’s not entirely true in all cases. Dozens of foreign professionals with experience in international leagues, many of whom begin as teenagers but often play into their 20s, have taken advantage of recent exceptions within the NCAA’s eligibility rules to litter Division I college basketball rosters this season.

Given that inconsistency, ESPN basketball analyst and licensed attorney Jay Bilas recently called out the NCAA’s often arbitrary eligibility rulings. He did so during an appearance on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption.

“I think we’ve got an issue where the NCAA doesn’t have eligibility rules that are based on any principle. There’s no age limit in college sports,” Bilas said. “I’m not saying there should be, but people are complaining about that. And we have similarly situated players that are treated differently,” Bilas said during Friday’s PTI. “You have international players that never matriculated to college but played pro basketball and made a lot of money, and they’re (ruled) eligible. And you’ve got players, international in nature, that didn’t go to college but went through the draft, and the NCAA deems them eligible.”

In December, the NCAA granted 21-year-old James Nnaji, a 7-foot center from Nigeria, immediate eligibility to play for Baylor despite being the 31st overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. That followed previous eligibility exceptions made for dozens of foreign professionals in the last few years. In fact, Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisville and Ole Miss currently have multiple former international professionals on their rosters this season, some who have more professional experience than Bediako.

“I don’t see a major difference between Charles Bediako and those players, except for the fact that he went to school (first). And I have a little bit of a problem with the way this has been handled, certainly with the way it’s been criticized,” Bilas continued. “Charles Bediako didn’t do anything wrong. He just wants to go to school and play ball. And I’m not sure Alabama did anything wrong either, honestly. He got a court ruling, they let him play while the courts said he was eligible, they’re not playing him when the court ruled that he’s not.”

Of course, while the NCAA earned a temporary win in its case against Bediako, it continues to take losses in other eligibility battles. That includes last Thursday, when Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss was effectively granted a sixth year of eligibility after a Mississippi judge awarded him an injunction in his case against the NCAA. Meanwhile, Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar is still awaiting word on his case for a similar injunction to play the 2026 season.

“In my view, if the NCAA wants to make this about players of a certain age, then say that college sports are for undergraduate students only and you have a six-year window after your high school class graduates. Problem solved. At least that would be based on some kind of principle,” Bilas concluded. “But there are so many exceptions out there, and the NCAA is making those exceptions, that to single out Charles Bediako of Alabama as some sort of villain in this, I think, has been wrong on the part of those that have done that.”