{"id":24451,"date":"2026-01-21T11:17:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T19:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=24451"},"modified":"2026-02-11T11:23:46","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:23:46","slug":"back-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/back-to-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to school"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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James Nnaji poses in his Baylor Bears uniform. | Photo from @cbbcontent on Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jan. 21 2026 | Isaac Garcia | Sports Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

The intense shift in college sports over the past few years has been well documented and discussed ad nauseam. College athletes can now earn money through contracts and brand deals after being strictly prohibited from doing so for essentially the entire history of college sports. In addition, transfer restrictions have been loosened, allowing athletes, for the most part, to become immediately eligible after transferring schools, while the old rule had required them to sit out for a season unless they were a graduate transfer or received some sort of waiver from the NCAA.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For some, the changes are ruining college sports. For others, the changes are welcome and make the system more fair for athletes. Every few months, it seems a new controversy pertaining to these name, image and likeness rules becomes a topic of debate in the sports industry. The newest of these controversies is the eligibility of Baylor center James Nnaji.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nnaji, age 21, was drafted 31st overall to the Detroit Pistons in 2023 after playing professionally for FC Barcelona\u2019s basketball team and then promptly traded to the Charlotte Hornets. A year later, he was traded to the Knicks as part of a larger deal that included All-Star center Karl Anthony-Towns. Nnaji never played official NBA minutes, playing only in the Summer League in 2023 and 2025. Nnaji was also a \u201cdraft and stash\u201d player, meaning that while he was drafted to the NBA, he would hold off on signing a contract and continue playing overseas until he and the team that held his draft rights \u2014 essentially the right to be the only NBA team negotiating with him \u2014 worked out a deal. The practice has been common with international players over the years, with players like Manu Ginobili, Arvydas Sabonis and current Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic all taking extra seasons with their pre-draft teams for various reasons before joining their teams in the NBA. Some players are drafted and stashed due to outstanding contractual obligations with their pre-draft teams and\/or because their team in the NBA thinks their development as a player is better off with a team in which they\u2019ll be getting more playing time. Some never sign contracts and end up continuing the remainder of their career in another league.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nnaji continued playing for Barcelona before being placed on loan to Girona and remaining there until March of 2025, when Nnaji and the club mutually agreed to part ways. Shortly thereafter, he would be loaned again, this time to Merkezefendi Belediyesi Denizli, a basketball club based in Turkey. In July, he announced that he and Barcelona had parted ways, making him a free agent. Nnaji, however, was not ready to give up on his dream of playing basketball at a high level and the Baylor Bears needed the help. After Nnaji\u2019s agent learned that Baylor\u2019s center depth was running thin due to injuries, he proposed the option of Nnaji joining the program to both Nnaji and the Baylor coaching staff. On Christmas Eve, his signing with the team and immediate eligibility were announced, drawing the ire of both coaches and fans. Arkansas coach John Calipari called the situation out in a press conference, saying, \u201cWhy did they let that kid play? Tell us all, \u2018Here\u2019s the reason.\u2019 Then we\u2019ll all go get pros.\u201d Baylor coach Bryce Drew defended the decision to add Nnaji, saying, \u201cWhen it came out that you could recruit G-League players, I was against it at first. I didn\u2019t want to do it, but we don\u2019t make the rules. If they say you can drive 80, you\u2019re going to drive 80. If you drive 70, you\u2019re going to get passed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

UCLA women\u2019s basketball coach Cori Close came to the defense of Drew, saying, \u201cThe reality is that I don\u2019t blame him for doing that if it\u2019s within the rules and it\u2019s the landscape we\u2019ve been given. We didn\u2019t ask for those.\u201d Close continued, \u201cThe reality is it\u2019s such a chaotic mess and the rules change every couple weeks, and there\u2019s no accountability, and what they said was going to be true about revenue share and caps and what third parties were going to be allowed to do and not allowed to do \u2026 hasn\u2019t transpired.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Close\u2019s comments speak to a larger conversation around the NCAA and its ability to enforce rules. It\u2019s important to note that the changes in name, image and likeness rules didn\u2019t come from the NCAA itself but rather from the NCAA essentially having its hand forced by a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that determined rules against student athletes monetizing their name, image and likeness violated antitrust laws. Still undetermined is whether college athletes legally have the same rights as employees of an organization do. There\u2019s also been legal challenges on the NCAA\u2019s rules about their eligibility timeline, and although for the most part those have stood, challenges are still currently going through court cases and could bring significant change. Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo voiced his displeasure with the NCAA as an authority figure, stating, \u201cI\u2019m not real excited about the NCAA or whoever is making these decisions, without talking to us, just letting it go. They\u2019re afraid they\u2019re going to get sued.\u201d Calipari simply said, \u201cLet them sue us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since joining the Bears, Nnaji has appeared in five games, playing an average of 14.2 minutes with 2.0 points, 4.4 rebounds, .4 assists and .4 blocks per game. The Bears have gone 1-4 in those five games and currently sit at 13th in the Big 12, although it is still pretty early in conference play. In his first game on the road against TCU, the crowd booed him. Nnaji believes the frustration is unwarranted, saying, \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything illegal. I didn\u2019t try to break any rule.\u201d Technically, Nnaji is right. He\u2019s still within five years of what his high school graduation would be, which is the window of eligibility the NCAA provides for student athletes, save for a few special cases. He\u2019s never been enrolled in college before and he never signed a real NBA contract.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that people are upset at James Nnaji; he\u2019s just an athlete doing whatever he can to chase a dream. In general, they\u2019re upset at the NCAA for what they perceive is a now lawless landscape in college athletics that is slowly turning it into a semi-pro development league, whether that be in football, basketball or any other sport.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlsports@mail.wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"Back to school","_seopress_titles_desc":"James Nnaji and the debate around the ever changing landscape of college athletics","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8595,8592,8587,8600,8584,8598,8593,8582,8583,8588,8590,8596,8591,8589,8594,8597,3389,8585,8586,8599],"class_list":["post-24451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-arkansas-razorbacks","tag-arvydas-sabonis","tag-baylor-bears","tag-bryce-drew","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-cori-close","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-girona","tag-james-nnaji","tag-john-calipari","tag-karl-anthony-towns","tag-manu-ginobili","tag-merkezefendi-belediyesi-denizli","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-nba","tag-nikola-jokic","tag-summer-league","tag-ucla-bruins"],"modified_by":"saragerrick","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24458,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24451\/revisions\/24458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}