Charles Barkley on NIL, transfer portal: 'You should not have the ability to get a better offer every year'

NBA legend Charles Barkley has not been shy about his thoughts on NIL and the transfer portal. During Saturday’s Kentucky vs. Indiana broadcast, he candidly discussed the landscape again.

Barkley called the game on ESPN alongside Dick Vitale, the first of two games they will work together. Vitale called for “stability” in college basketball – and college sports as a whole – because of the amount of player movement via the portal. He used Indiana as an example since new coach Darian DeVries virtually built the program from scratch.

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While Barkley acknowledged he’s in favor of athletes making money through NIL, he also called out players staying more than their four years of eligibility. In addition, he disagreed with the idea of athletes being allowed to seek better offers after every season.

“No. 1, I’m not opposed to players getting paid,” Barkley said on the broadcast. “I always want my players to get treated fairly. But I can’t remember the last time I heard the word, COVID. Some of these guys have been in college for six or seven years. If you’re in college for six or seven years, your name better be, ‘Dr. Somebody.’ You should not still be playing college basketball after six or seven years.

“But you should not have the ability to get a better offer every year. That’s not fair to any school that you are affiliated with because I can’t even do that. None of us can do that, take a better – Amazon, anybody or FOX Sports can come and say, ‘Well, we’ll give you more money and you can leave after every year.’ That’s not fair. … We’ve got to put some guardrails on these sports.”

One of the other new parts of the college basketball landscape is G-League players seeking eligibility. The NCAA has changed its approach regarding players who played in the G-League, arguing they were not professional athletes in a way the old rule said. Instead, if those players are within five years of their high school graduation, they could become eligible unless they went through the NBA Draft process or signed an NBA contract.

To Charles Barkley, that’s another area that needs fixing. He does not think former G-League players should be able to play college basketball.

“We’ve got guys playing in the G-League coming back to college sports now,” he said. “I don’t think that’s fair.”