TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – If this was the end of college basketball as we knew it, it finished with a rousing ovation.
As Charles Bediako, a 23-year old who was playing for the G League’s Motor City Cruise all of a week ago, checked in with 16:11 in the first half, he was welcomed back to a standing ovation from many of the 13,474 Alabama fans in attendance inside Coleman Coliseum. Bediako will no doubt receive far less welcoming reactions if he’s eligible to continue playing past Saturday night’s 79-73 loss vs. Tennessee, but Alabama fans seemed to relish that the Crimson Tide defied the NCAA’s wishes and played him.
Bediako quickly scored four points after coming onto the floor including a dunk that again brought an electric Tide crowd to its feet. If you wondered why Alabama was willing to go through all this trouble, to evoke such strong and often negative reactions from its peers, this was it. In the first half, Bediako gave Alabama the kind of elite rim-runner it has been missing, scoring eight points on 4-4 shooting. He finished with 13 points, two blocks and three rebounds in 25 minutes of action.
“I thought he was good,” said Alabama coach Nate Oats. “He almost led us in blue-collar points. He’s got to get a few more rebounds for us, he knows it and he was telling me that in the first half when he came out. The guys all loved him and he’s a great teammate. He’s going to help us moving forward, we just got to get him rebounding the ball a little bit especially on the defensive end.”
That is an important part to remember: Alabama is going through all this trouble not because it is some revolutionary and trying to stick it to the NCAA. It is doing so because it badly needed a backup big man, and Bediako was the best possible mid-season addition available. Even with Bediako’s contribution, a short-handed Alabama team without its second and third-leading scorers lost its second consecutive home game for the first time in six seasons.
Bediako has another hearing Tuesday to determine if this was a one-and-done foray back into college basketball or if he can stick with this Alabama team through the remainder of the season. When asked about it Saturday night, Bediako sidestepped the question but his answer indicated he doesn’t want it to end after only one game.
“My main focus is around this next game and just getting better with the team,” Bediako said.
If he’s successful Tuesday in getting an injunction, this could be just the beginning of what’s to come in college basketball. The line between professional and college athlete has already faded to an almost infinitesimal difference. Just this year alone we’ve seen what we believed to be clear and impenetrable rules fall by the wayside.
Parallels with Baylor’s Nnaji
First, it was Baylor bringing in James Nnaji, who was drafted 31st overall in the 2023 NBA Draft but never played in the NBA nor collegiately. Notably, the NCAA approved Nnaji’s waiver – it did not do so for Bediako – but it still felt like a crossroads moment.
Nnanji’s return prompted Bediako to consider a return to college basketball after playing for Alabama from 2021-23. Bediako went undrafted in 2023 and hasn’t played in the NBA but signed a two-way contract with the San Antonio Spurs. That should have prevented a collegiate return – once you forego eligibility and sign an NBA deal there’s no going back, or so we believed – but he successfully obtained a temporary restraining order (TRO) to play in Saturday’s important home game against Tennessee.
Who knows what happens next. Some school somewhere could become even more aggressive in trying to add a former NBA player onto its roster. What about trying to convince an NBA 15th man who isn’t playing to come back for another year of college basketball and an accompanying big NIL payday?
This is the world we live in. The NCAA is feckless and hapless at enforcing its rules. Despite strongly worded statements from NCAA president Charlie Baker and vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt, Alabama forged ahead undeterred. As long as you can get in front of a friendly local judge, anything is possible these days. If Saturday night is any proof, the fanbase will love you for it.
“What they’re doing now is exploiting the NCAA and they’re forum shopping in some aspects, saying, ‘Well, if that’s the case, we’re going to jump down from federal court to state court where we could get a more favorable result,” said Mitch Gilfillan, a former college basketball coach and now an attorney at Quinn Johnston. “Until Congress acts, which it does not appear that they’re going to, I think you’re going to continue to see more and more challenges.”
Scott Schneider, a Title IX and employment attorney, calls it “a real structural problem for how the NCAA is organized.” Due to the NCAA’s unincorporated association structure, it is technically a citizen in each state it has a member institution. That makes it vulnerable to state courts that may be more friendly to the local university than the national NCAA organization.
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Schools look for home-court advantage
It played out in Tuscaloosa where Tuscaloosa County judge James Roberts has donated at least $100,000 to the Crimson Tide Foundation, according to its website. His wife, defense attorney Mary Turner Roberts, continues to represent former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles who has been charged with capital murder in the January 2023 shooting of Jamea Harris.
It’s not exclusively an Alabama situation, either.
It could help Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss gain a sixth year of eligibility after being denied by the NCAA and later filing a lawsuit in Lafayette County in Mississippi. It could help Duke in its recently filed lawsuit against quarterback Darian Mensah, as a local judge already granted a TRO to prevent Mensah from enrolling at another school.
“If they were a corporation or organized in a different way, this lawsuit that was filed against them in Alabama, what they could do at that point is remove it to federal court,” Schneider told CBS Sports. “But because they are a citizen in Alabama, they can’t do that. You see this in the Chambliss lawsuit, you see this with (Bediako) in Alabama and you see it over and over again. If I can file a case in a favorable forum, I’m probably going to get a good result.”
Alabama will learn more Tuesday but comments like Oats’ “he’s going to help us moving forward” certainly indicate how the school thinks it’ll turn out. It’s not a bad election strategy for local judges to side with the popular university, either.
After the game ended, fans waited to cheer on Bediako as he left for the locker room. A trio of elementary-school aged fans had handmade signs they wanted Alabama’s newest basketball player to sign. In a surreal moment emblematic of where college sports is these days, Bediako gladly autographed one that read, “Bama Pay$ Better.”
“Everybody came to support,” Bediako said. “It felt great to be back, especially with an Alabama across my chest.”
To put it mildly, many around the sport don’t believe it’s quite so great that Bediako is back and playing. Critics believe actions like Alabama suiting up Bediako have left college basketball’s foundation as shaky as ever. “We just need some people to stand up and start taking a stand,” Florida coach Todd Golden said earlier this week.
In Tuscaloosa, fans gladly stood up and cheered its erosion.
