Paul Akere
It’s a great time to be recruited, unless you're a high school athlete with dreams of playing in college. Former professionals now look to collegiate basketball to continue their career. At the Big 12 basketball media days on October 22, 2025, Bill Self, two-time Associated Press Coach of the Year and head coach for Kansas’ Men’s Basketball team, sounded off. He told reporters that his team would be calling National Basketball Association (“NBA”) teams to find out which professionals would become available for his recruitment.1
As jarring as Coach Self’s statements are, they’re reflective of the confusion on the line between the amateurism that ostensibly differentiates college athletics from professional sports. His statements came two days after the University of Louisville Basketball team announced the commitment of London Johnson.2 Johnson spent three years in the NBA and was given two additional years of collegiate eligibility.3 This was the second of such cases in the span of a month. In late September, Santa Clara announced the signing of guard Theirry Darlan from the Central African Republic—Darlan spent the past two years in G League, the NBA’s developmental league.4
So how did we get here? In recent years the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”), the governing body for collegiate eligibility, scholarships, and payments has seen their enforcement powers drawn back by various legal injunctions for being anti-competitive.5 New economic incentives have completely distorted the past versions of amateurism that the NCAA relied on. Most notably, the “House Settlement” from June of this year.6
Under the judgement of Judge Claudia Wilken (“Judge Wilken,”) the three representatives from the House class-action lawsuit and the NCAA came to a settlement. The “House Settlement” allows student athletes to profit directly from the revenue produced by collegiate athletics.7 Before the “House Settlement” the NCAA found athletes who accepted payment for playing their sport to be ineligible because their amateur status would be jeopardized. The uncertainty in the definition of amateurism is not new. In her 2014 ruling in Ed O’Bannon v. NCAA, Judge Wilken made it clear that the NCAA had failed to clearly define the meaning of amateurism, “The associations’ current rules demonstrate that, even today, the NCAA does not necessarily adhere to a single definition of amateurism."8 This quote is more true than ever before.
Per the NCAA amateurism bylaws, professional athletes remain NCAA eligible so long as they were not paid more than actual and necessary expenses.9 Major questions remain as to what is considered “actual and necessary expenses.” The NCAA first began relaxing the permissibility of ex-professionals for international student athletes.10 The number of international basketball players has more than doubled since the 2008–2009 season.11 The NCAA examines how many games an athlete participated in compared to the total amount for each year they’ve been out of high school, but not enrolled in college. G League players can be eligible for college if they graduated high school within five years of the time they are looking to enter college.12
The malevolent effort by the NCAA to muddle the definition of student athletes has come to a boiling point. With economic incentives in view and the NCAA losing their power to enforce, many former professional basketball players across the globe have seized the chance to benefit from the opportunities offered by the NCAA. The NCAA released a statement on October 24th acknowledging that NCAA rules allow players who competed professionally prior to collegiate enrollment to retain eligibility for college sports.13 This statement does little to remedy the uncertainty regarding the definition of an amateur.
While the NCAA continues to battle cases regarding their limitations on eligibility and its effect on participation in the labor market, college coaches will continue to search for the best prospects to help them win. For many, this means examining markets with professionals. No one seems to be thinking about the high school athletes that used to be the primary beneficiaries of college recruiting. They are no longer competing with each other for roster spots, they now have to consider former professional athletes from both domestic and international leagues.
[1]John Leuzzi, Bill Self on G-League players in college basketball: “Have no idea what we’re doing,” USA Today (Oct. 22, 2025), https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2025/10/22/bill-self-ncaa-g-league-comments-nba-louisville-basketball-kansas/86844675007/ [https://web.archive.org/web/20251112022536/https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2025/10/22/bill-self-ncaa-g-league-comments-nba-louisville-basketball-kansas/86844675007/].
[2]Matthew McGavic, Highlights & Evaluation: Louisville PG Commit London Johnson, Sports Illustrated (Oct. 21, 2025), https://www.si.com/college/louisville/basketball/london-johnson-breakdown [https://web.archive.org/web/20251112023608/https://www.si.com/college/louisville/basketball/london-johnson-breakdown]
[3]Id.
[4]Jeremy Woo, NCAA rules former G League player Thierry Darlan eligible, ESPN (Sept. 23, 2025), https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/46356407/ncaa-rules-former-g-league-player-thierry-darlan-eligible.
[5]In re Coll. Athlete NIL Litig., No. 25-4185, 2025 WL 2831020 (9th Cir. July 29, 2025).
[6]Id.
[7]Id.
[8]O'Bannon v. Nat'l Collegiate Athletic Ass'n, 802 F.3d 1049 (9th Cir. 2015).
[9]NCSA College Recruiting, NCAA Amateurism Rules and Certification, NCSA (2025), https://www.ncsasports.org/ncaa-eligibility-center/amateurism-rules [https://web.archive.org/web/20251112031830/https://www.ncsasports.org/ncaa-eligibility-center/amateurism-rules].
[10]Alex Schiffer, Is College Basketball About to Raid the G League?, Front Office Sports (Nov. 8, 2022), https://frontofficesports.com/ncaa-basketball-g-league-nil-ignite/ [https://web.archive.org/web/20251108224630/https://frontofficesports.com/ncaa-basketball-g-league-nil-ignite/].
[11] Tim Schultz, College Basketball Seeing Influx of Int’l Players as Rev-Share Era Begins, Sports Business Journal (Nov. 6, 2025), https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/11/06/college-basketball-seeing-influx-of-intl-players-as-rev-share-era-begins/ [https://web.archive.org/web/20251112032510/https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/11/06/college-basketball-seeing-influx-of-intl-players-as-rev-share-era-begins/].
[12]Supra note 10.
[13]Pete Thamel, X post, X (Oct. 24, 2025), https://x.com/PeteThamel/status/1981799692586348585