Tennessee expertly trolls Charles Bediako, Alabama after beating Crimson Tide

Tennessee didn’t just win the game against Alabama. They won the battle on social media ... and it wasn’t even close.

After the Volunteers’ 79-73 victory against the Crimson Tide, Tennessee took to Twitter/X to troll Alabama for bringing back Charles Bediako, a former G-League player who left the program in 2023 for the NBA, in the middle of the week. 

The Blue Coats the post is referencing are the Delaware Blue Coats, a team in the G-League.

Bediako made his season debut on Saturday against Tennessee, scoring 13 points in the loss. The move by Nate Oats to bring a professional player back to college has been controversial, but he isn’t the first coach to do so this season, as Baylor’s Scott Drew added James Nnaji, a first-round pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, to the Bears’ roster.

For Auburn head coach Steven Pearl, it is the start of a slippery slope that could result in players who have forgone their college eligibility seeking to regain it to take advantage of the NIL money they are now paid at the college level. It would also be a tough situation for Pearl, as he described this past week.

“It’s slippery because, if I put myself in that situation, and say I bring in Sharife Cooper,” Pearl said. “Played one year for us during COVID. He actually, based on the timeline, could do what Bediako’s doing and play the rest of the season potentially,“ Pearl said. ”What am I going to say to Travis Pettiford, Tahaad’s dad, bringing in a kid like that in the middle of the year to potentially compete with or replace his son?”

The Bediako situation is just another example of the NCAA losing all control over college athletics, as no one has stepped in to rule on it since it became a new trend. Everyone can be confident that if Pearl had his druthers, he wouldn’t mind having a player like Jabari Smith or Walker Kessler back, but unlike Bediako, those guys are succeeding in the pros.