Last month, St. John’s signed Olimpia Milano point guard Quinn Ellis. Ellis, who just turned 23, is a starter for a team that competes in the EuroLeague and has won the last two Italian Cups. He was named Italian Cup MVP last year.
The EuroLeague is considered the second-best league in the world after the NBA. The average age of the current Milano roster, excluding Ellis, is 29.9 years.
So why would Ellis leave a team of seasoned pros in the second-best league in the world to go down a level?
According to BasketNews, Ellis will receive approximately $4.8 million, a likely significant increase over his current overseas salary.
“College basketball has quickly turned into the second-highest paid league in the world,” said Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz, who will have one of the highest-paid teams outside of a high-major conference. “I mean, it’s not even close.”
The best rosters in college basketball next season will cost north of $15 million, a number that keeps climbing every season, and has created a “never graduate” mentality. Injured players don’t return once they’re healthy to preserve college eligibility. Players who have exhausted their eligibility enter the transfer portal in hopes of a rule change that would give them another year.
That rule may finally be arriving, although it will not apply to players who exhausted their eligibility in 2025-26. In late April, the Division I Board of Directors took the first step toward the NCAA adopting a new five-in-five rule, allowing student-athletes to compete for five seasons within five years. The rule change will be discussed at the Division I Cabinet meeting on May 22; that cabinet has decision-making authority.
In the proposal, an athlete’s eligibility clock will begin in the academic year after they turn 19 or graduate from high school — whichever comes first — and will end in five years. Ellis, for example, would be eligible next season under these parameters, but he’d be able to play only one season.
Over the past week, The Athletic interviewed nine college basketball coaches to gather their opinions on the proposed change. Most are in favor of the certainty the rule would provide.
“Most coaches would agree, five in five probably would get everybody out of the waiver business,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said, “and that’s a good thing for college basketball.”
“It’ll be cleaner and easier,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said, “and everybody should be on the same page.”
“We’re a 24-and-under league,” New Mexico coach Eric Olen said. “That makes sense.”
The change would likely have unanimous support if it also included a return to the one-time transfer rule, which allowed student-athletes one transfer without penalty and required them to sit out one season if transferring a second time before graduation. The only exception would be a coaching change.
The one-time transfer rule was in effect from 2021 to 2024, when legal pressure from a coalition of state attorneys general forced the NCAA to abandon it and allow unlimited transfers.
Every coach interviewed supported a return to the one-time transfer rule, and Purdue coach Matt Painter’s opposition of the five-in-five change is entirely tied to transfers.
“If they don’t change the transfer rule, they made it worse,” Painter said. “They made it absolutely worse. They made their life easier because they don’t have to deal with as many waivers. But if everybody can transfer every single year, you’ve added a year to the equation. Someone can play five years for five different teams.”
Matt Painter would like to see the one-time transfer rule changed for him to get behind the 5-in-5 rule. (Eakin Howard / Imagn Images)
Most coaches are skeptical that changes to the transfer rules will accompany this rule. President Donald Trump did sign an executive order last month that includes a provision limiting transfers, allowing student-athletes to transfer only once without sitting out a season before they graduate. However, many aspects of the order could stand up to legal challenges is uncertain.
“I think for this thing to work, we have to put some teeth into it,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “Until there’s an antitrust component in all this, then we live in constant fear of a lawsuit. All it takes is one guy to say you’re limiting my ability to profit off of my name, image and likeness by not allowing me to chase or have a better opportunity elsewhere.
“The players’ rights will always win,” Sampson added. “But at some point, we’ve got to be guardians of the game. How do we make our game better?”
This would help, especially when paired with a one-time transfer rule. But there are two unintended consequences that coaches dislike.
The first consequence, coaches said, is the change eliminates redshirts, because a redshirt would no longer extend eligibility.
“Now you’re going to have a full roster that expects to play,” Painter said. “If guys aren’t going to be in a rotation or they’re going to be our eighth or ninth man, we’ve redshirted a lot of those guys.”
The redshirt can reduce dissension, because the focus is on development and adjusting to college and not playing time.
“A redshirt allows a player to make improvements without the pressure of thinking, ‘man, I’m not good enough here. I’m not playing.’ Well, just because you’re not ready doesn’t mean you’re not good enough,” Painter said. “And a lot of people will tell you that. The internet does that. Fans do that. Oh, he’s not good enough. Well, it’s hard when you’re 19 years old to adjust to major college basketball when you’re going against 22, 23, 24-year-olds. That year allows for a lot of growth, and now it sets you up for a better career.”
The second impact is the five-in-five makes it harder for freshmen to earn playing time, which could lead to more roster movement.
“You’ve almost, without formalizing it, gone back and said freshmen don’t play varsity basketball,” Santa Clara coach Herb Sendek said. (Before the 1972-73 season, freshmen were not allowed to play football or basketball.) “They play on the freshman team, like David Thompson did at North Carolina State.”
Sendek said there are obvious exceptions. The top prospects will still play as freshmen, but it will now be harder for most younger players.
Olen sees a world where this could push high school prospects to consider starting at lower levels, which would just generate player movement in a different direction.
“For a long time, everyone at every level kind of felt kids are gonna go to the highest level they can,” Olen said. “You’re seeing some of that dissipate with the new landscape. I think you’re gonna see more of that dissipate a little bit, where players, even right out of high school, are gonna be reluctant to go to places where they can’t play sooner rather than later. Or you’re going to see more of the two-year, multiyear deals come into play.”
That’s another beef coaches have with the current setup. While contracts are being signed, most only lock in the school, not the player.
“Contracts have to be good both ways,” Schertz said. “When people say, the coaches’ portal’s open, I agree. But almost every coach I know has a buyout that’s more than their year-to-year salary that either the coach themselves or the institution they’re moving to has to compensate the school they took the coach from.
“So now if you want to say that, you sign a player for a $1 million, and for them to leave, they or the school they’re going to has to pay you $2 million. And they’re not eligible to play at the other school until that money is received. Then I think you’re having a different conversation that would also really tamper down the movement.”
Schertz would like to see college basketball adopt a system similar to European soccer and basketball, where an acquiring team must pay for transfers. He’d also love to see a system similar to the NBA’s Bird rights, where a player can earn more staying with his current team than if he chose to go into free agency. Or a system where a player receives a bonus year — the fifth year — if he graduates in four years or stays at one school for four seasons.
The coaches all have ideas, and one frustration they have with the system for changing and adopting new rules is that they’re hardly part of the process. The Division I Cabinet does not include any coaches; it consists mostly of athletic directors and conference commissioners.
“I love being in the rooms and listening to someone from the NCAA or a commissioner or an AD or a faculty rep because they come from a different perspective, then I like forming my opinion after I listen to them,” Painter said. “They don’t reciprocate that to coaches. Now some people in a room do. But the total piece, when you’re coming to it, they really don’t. And it probably irritates them that we keep saying this, but they just don’t. It’s their actions. They can say whatever they want. Their actions show that they don’t do those things.”
Painter said the NCAA has made some strides in the Oversight Committee, which includes three head coaches among its 20 members. But when it comes time to vote, Painter said, the coaches are still in the minority. “There’s just a disconnect with coaches, and there always has been,” Painter said.
The five-in-five rule is a response, however, to what coaches want in terms of consistency for eligibility.
Players like Ellis, professionals coming to play college basketball from overseas, have made it a necessity to know who is eligible and for how long. The argument that those players should not be eligible because they’re already professionals hasn’t held up because college basketball has become more of a professional enterprise.
But because the international model for amateurs is so different — young players play on professional feeder teams — it’s easier to determine how many years of eligibility players have when timelines are consistent across the board.
Illinois brought in numerous international transfers. Head coach Brad Underwood doesn’t see that changing. (Bob Donnan / Imagn Images)
Illinois coach Brad Underwood, who built most of his team last year with international prospects, believes international recruiting will remain a big part of today’s game with a slight adjustment.
“I think it’ll be a push towards the youth,” he said.
Underwood agreed that it would have happened organically in the next couple of years anyway.
Previously, the best international players could earn money overseas in their teens but not in college. Now they can earn in both places, but they’ll land where they can make the most. Consider Duke’s recent signing of FC Barcelona center Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje, who turns 17 on May 30 and will need to play two college seasons before he’s age-eligible for the NBA Draft.
So, eventually, a scenario where St. John’s pays seven figures for a 23-year-old point guard from England will rarely even be an option. Because Ellis will have made that move years earlier, starting his college career at 19 to maximize his earning potential.
“The turnover isn’t going anywhere, but my hope is that it gives us the potential to do a little bit more roster building, planning beyond the year-to-year,” Olen said. “Now, I don’t know if that’s really gonna happen, but to me, that’s sort of on our end, the potential upside of more certainty in everyone’s path and clock and eligibility hopefully can allow us to build a little more beyond 10 months at a time.”
