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John Calipari Went Off on College Basketball Eligibility and Transfer Rules

Stephen Douglas

John Calipari has something to say about eligibility.
John Calipari has something to say about eligibility. / Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images
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One of the biggest stories in college basketball right now is James Nnaji, Baylor's newest recruit, a 21-year old from Nigeria who has been playing professional basketball since 2021 and who was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in the second round of the 2023 NBA draft.

Nnaji has not played in the NBA, but he has had his rights traded twice since he was drafted. That, combined with the aforementioned professional basketball stints in EuroLeague, Spain's Liga ACB and Turkey's Basketball Super League, would make Nnaji joining Baylor a bit of a hot topic, even if he wasn't doing it in the middle of a season.

John Calipari was asked about the situation after Arkansas' win over James Madison on Monday night and he went off on a rant about the current rules in college basketball. Calipari had some suggestions to fix the transfer portal, player retention and graduation rates before flatly stating you shouldn't be allowed to play college once you've gone pro.

"You can't be 30," said Calipari. "You've got five years. Clock is ticking. If you go pro, I don't care what country you're from. You leave your name in, you cannot play college basketball. If you transfer midseason, you can't play. You gotta sit out. How about we just do that stuff? We can do it without having Congress and the Senate getting 60 votes. We can do that. Let them sue us on that stuff."

It seems like the kind of thing that Baylor coach Scott Drew probably would have agreed with him on. At least until Nnaji became available.

"Early on when it first came out with G League players I wasn't in favor of that either," said Drew. "But again, we don't make the rules and as we find out about things we're always going to adapt to put our program in the best position to be successful because that's what we get paid to do."

Who knows how long it will take for college basketball's rules to catch up to the modern times, but until they work out all of these issues, coaches are going to continue to change their views on certain things if it means their team can gain even the tiniest advantage. Maybe someday Coach Cal would even do something that other coaches might not agree with. Only time will tell.

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Stephen Douglas
STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in media since 2008 and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Douglas spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and previously wrote for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.

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