Bring back Chuma Okeke! Let Charles Barkley roam the floor for Auburn again. Heck, can Cam Newton come back and play quarterback for the Tigers next season?
It all makes as much sense as what is going on in Tuscaloosa, as Nate Oats has somehow found a way to dig a little deeper into what is wrong with college sports with the outlandish idea to bring back Charles Bediako to the Alabama basketball roster. Even worse, a judge in Tuscaloosa has granted a temporary order allowing Bediako to join the Crimson Tide in practices and games.
With an upcoming game against Tennessee on Saturday, the 23-year-old Canadian native could take the court for Alabama for the first time since 2023, when he decided to go to the NBA draft.
Oh, you remember the draft and the idea of going pro, forgoing your collegiate eligibility and thus never being able to put on a collegiate jersey again, right? Well, that idea has been totally thrown out the window from a 50th-floor balcony, bounced a few times and landed in a gravel pit.
Nate Oats isn't the first culprit
Oats isn’t the first person to take advantage of this this season. Baylor head coach Scott Drew broke the ice by bringing back James Nnaji, a former Bears player who was the 31st pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. Drew claimed that Nnaji couldn’t handle the rigors of the NBA. Tough luck that would have been in every year past. Now, players who fail at the higher level can return to college as if nothing happened.
I bet former high school jocks who are missing being a big fish in a small pond are salivating at the chance that this rule falls to the high school ranks, so they have that one last chance at state.
Granted, this is just one of thousands of problems with college athletics that the NCAA and other governing bodies lost control of a long time ago, and after a few days, this will go away because, I don’t know, a player decides he can play two sports at two different schools, or a coach decides to sit a player so he won’t earn a NIL incentive.
Whatever the case, the system is broken, and it will never be fixed.
Now, let me go see if Casey Mize is ready to take the mound for Auburn again.