Alabama Earned Its Scarlet Letter in the Charles Bediako Eligibility Fight

Tide athletic director Greg Byrne will have to face his NCAA basketball committee peers who will decide how to view Alabama after an attempt to skirt the rules.

Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats and the Crimson Tide must wear the scarlet letter in trying to skirt NCAA rules through court. | David Leong-Imagn Images

In a few weeks, the NCAA men’s basketball committee will gather in person for one of its regular meetings, an annual tradition that allows the dozen members of the powerful body charged with picking teams for the tournament to review and debate the season. 

As the commissioners and athletic directors file into some nondescript conference room in nice suits or slick polos, perhaps there should be a new adornment for the proceedings. 

A lovely knit pullover with a scarlet “S” will do. If one can’t be ordered in time, an NCAA-branded blue dunce cap could probably be procured instead. At worst, finding a few bells to accompany some chants of “Shame,” may be equally appropriate. 

Whatever the tact, let it lay at the feet of Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne later this month when he enters the room. His school’s actions in trying to game the system for an advantage have not only made the rest of the committee members’ job more difficult in terms of seeding the bracket this year, but likely caused many of his peers to sprout a few more gray hairs in anger and frustration all the same. 

On Monday, some sanity in the matter seemed to have prevailed at last as Judge Daniel Pruet of the Tuscaloosa (Ala.) Circuit Court put a halt to the temporary restraining order heard ’round the world of basketball the past few weeks. Center Charles Bediako, a former Crimson Tide player from 2021 to ’23 who rejoined the team last month, had initially been granted a reprieve on his eligibility by the court after his and the school’s attempts to get the thumbs-up to play from the NCAA went nowhere. That allowed him to play five games with this season’s squad in which they went 3–2 and saw the former All-SEC Freshman average 10 points in just over 20 minutes worth of game time. 

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne is on the NCAA men’s basketball committee. | Gary Cosby Jr.-Tuscaloosa News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“Common sense won a round today. The court saw this for what it is: an attempt by professionals to pivot back to college and crowd out the next generation of students. College sports are for students, not for people who already walked away to go pro and now want to hit the ‘undo’ button at the expense of a teenager’s dream,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said in a statement. “While we’re glad the court upheld the rules our members actually want, one win doesn’t fix the national mess of state laws. It’s time for Congress to stop watching from the sidelines and help us provide some actual stability.”

It should come as no surprise that Baker would want to pivot from celebrating a triumphant ruling to speak toward a broader plea for help, all as the organization deals with dozens of other eligibility cases—including some this week—in the NCAA’s quest to enforce their own rules that has hit up every branch of the government in hopes of assistance.

They’ve been begging Congress for years and spent millions on K Street lobbyists to further their cause in this area to no avail. They’ve acquiesced to the White House’s line of thinking on unrelated matters in hopes of a positive pronouncement that has not come. They know the inside of courthouses, both federal and state, like the back of their hand amid the billable hours that have run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Yet the most frustrating aspect of all of this beseeching to higher powers is that their own schools keep cutting checks to pull stunts like this one with Bediako. 

Charles Bediako played in five games for the Crimson Tide during a temporary restraining order that expired this week. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

“While we understand the concern around competitive and developmental implications of former professional athletes participating in college, it is important to acknowledge reality. The NCAA has granted eligibility to over 100 current men’s basketball players with prior professional experience in the G League or overseas,” Alabama said in a statement. “Granting eligibility to some former professionals, and not to others, is what creates the havoc we are currently in and why consistency from decision-makers is so desperately needed.”

Apologies if your eyes just rolled backward into your head upon reading that. The only havoc in this case stems from the Tide’s pursuit of it by any means necessary, mostly brought about because of an injury crisis on a team that has existed for decades in the state largely to pass the time between the final whistle of the bowl game and the start of spring football. 

Alabama coach Nate Oats just last month was pulling on public heartstrings by bringing up his high school basketball background in order to lament Baylor’s James Nnaji being granted the opportunity to become eligible. The ink printing such words was barely dry when another injury in his frontcourt forced him to get creative in order to add to the roster. 

Enter Bediako, who naturally needed little ramp-up time after suiting up in a G League game all the way back on, uh, Jan. 17.  

“Charles has done nothing wrong,” Oats told reporters two weeks ago. “I will stand by our guys every single time, no matter what the outside says when they’ve done nothing wrong.”

Bediako may not have done anything wrong in the sense that he willingly signed up to be a pawn in this whole process in exchange for some form of compensation, but the school sure has by taking this charade to its zenith. 

What makes Bediako far different from all of the cases that Oats, Alabama and his lawyers keep arguing are similar, is that he willingly came to Tuscaloosa to play college basketball out of high school and willingly left it, too. The player, the school and the head coach all knew he was going to test the waters of the 2023 NBA draft, knew he crossed the NCAA rubicon of not returning to the program before a very public deadline and purposefully moved forward with forfeiting his remaining eligibility even though he could go undrafted (which is precisely what happened). 

This isn’t a Euroleague benchwarmer hoping for a better deal after toiling away in small gyms across the pond who never had a chance to go through the process that Bediako meandered through nor is it akin to the draft-and-stash variety like Nnaji who never met the definition of an American professional either. 

Alabama knew this all a few weeks ago and moved ahead no matter the hypocrisy they sure understood it all to be. They for sure know it now as they’re left in a lurch on the actual basketball court and with an even bigger stain on their program’s reputation in the wake of this latest legal setback.

“The rules do not permit a student-athlete to participate in collegiate basketball, leave for the NBA, and return to the collegiate arena,” the judge’s ruling clearly stated. “All the evidence in the record indicates that the [NCAA] has consistently applied this specific rule.”

It’s a cutthroat world in college athletics and all involved understand that you’re only as good as what your record shows at the end of the season. There’s a way to navigate such tense waters without undercutting the whole profession however, which seems to have been forgotten by those in charge at Alabama as of late. 

Perhaps Oats will learn that the hard way if others in the coaching community take some time to rightfully trumpet this ruling as good for the game’s best interests and to shame the coach behind it for even attempting such a maneuver. Maybe the dunce cap being placed on the athletic director, who should have firmly said no long before the idea could even fester, will be an appropriate reminder of a saga gone wrong. 

At some point though, Alabama will have to own its scarlet letter in this matter and know it’s not coming off any time soon.

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