The NCAA’s Rulings on James Wiseman and Chase Young Remind Us Why It Should Not Exist
Wiseman and Young are arguably the top prospects in next year’s NBA and NFL drafts, respectively, and two of the most exciting players in all of college sports. Naturally, the NCAA is trying to prevent them from suiting up for their schools.
Friday, the NCAA issued a reminder, in case anybody needed one, of why it should no longer exist. In a pair of unrelated but stunningly similar developments, the association called into question the eligibility of arguably the top prospect in all of college football, Ohio State’s Chase Young, and arguably the top prospect in all of college basketball, Memphis’s James Wiseman. The players are each being investigated for low-scale financial dealings from years past. However, the two schools have responded to the allegations in drastically different ways.
Young, a dynamic pass rusher who has risen to the top of many 2020 NFL draft boards, received a loan in 2018 from someone Young and his attorney described as “a family friend.” The loan reportedly allowed Young’s family to attend the 2019 Rose Bowl and has since been repaid. Young will sit for the top-ranked Buckeyes on Saturday, when they face Maryland—don’t worry, they’ll still win—and potentially longer. For now, Ohio State seems committed to complying with the NCAA’s ruling by sitting Young.
Wiseman, a 7-foot-1 freshman who was considered the top recruit in the high school class of 2019, got dinged over payments his family received from Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway in 2017 when Wiseman’s family moved from Nashville to Memphis. The story is complicated. Hardaway, a Memphis alum and former NBA star, has turned the Tigers’ program into a national contender in his second season as head coach with a star-filled recruiting class highlighted by Wiseman. Wiseman’s attorney said Friday that Hardaway paid Wiseman’s family $11,500 in moving expenses and aid. But Hardaway was not Memphis’s head coach at the time of the payment—he was merely an assistant coach at a Memphis high school where Wiseman transferred and the namesake of the Team Penny program for whom Wiseman played his AAU ball. Wiseman’s move to Memphis and his affiliation with Hardaway was the source of controversy at the time—Tennessee’s high school athletic association briefly ruled that Wiseman was ineligible to play high school ball. Wiseman was initially cleared to play at Memphis in May, but that was before evidence of Hardaway’s payment emerged—the NCAA deemed him a booster, according to Wiseman’s attorney—leading to Friday’s announcement.
While Ohio State complied with the NCAA’s ruling, Memphis does not seem interested in following suit. The school received an emergency court order temporarily reinstating Wiseman’s eligibility, allowing him to play in Friday night’s game against Illinois-Chicago. This could be a problem down the road, because the NCAA considers itself its own legal system, and could punish Memphis with scholarship reductions or postseason bans if it finds the school knowingly played an ineligible player. After Wiseman took the court Friday night, the NCAA issued an ominous tweet clarifying that Wiseman was “likely ineligible” and the decision on whether or not to play him rested with Memphis:
Ohio State, I suppose, is acting in its own interest as it pursues a national championship. It’s undefeated and the no. 1 team in the country, but has deemed the risks of playing Young to outweigh the reward of having his impact on the field—at least for the time being. The Buckeyes are likely wagering they can keep their championship aspirations on track while they resolve Young’s situation. Memphis, on the other hand, seems intent on waging a season-long war with the NCAA, unafraid of the punishments it could possibly receive through its defiance. And that might be a smart bet: It’s often the schools that cooperate with the NCAA that get punished the hardest. Memphis has never had an assortment of talent like the one Hardaway has assembled—not even when former Tigers coach John Calipari got Derrick Rose—and it might never again. Might as well enjoy the ride, right?
Morally, the NCAA is obviously in the wrong here. This is an organization losing PR battle after PR battle. There’s something screwed up about a billion-dollar organization whose primary goal is ensuring the working athletes who generate revenue don’t receive any of the money. Several states have introduced bills allowing athletes to at least make money off their own names, images, and likenesses. The NCAA responded with a desperate attempt to save face by announcing it would consider allowing similar changes in 2023. Friday’s rulings remind us that this press release was meaningless: The NCAA remains antiplayer.
Even in the spectrum of an organization that prevents schools from paying athletes and prevents athletes from taking jobs and from profiting off of their names, the Young and Wiseman rulings seem needlessly cruel. Why can’t a player receive and pay back a loan from a person not affiliated with a university? Why, exactly, can’t a school pay for a player’s family to attend a game? Why can’t a high school coach help his player move? It is not enough that the talented players cannot be paid; they and their families must remain flat broke.
But even from a pragmatic perspective, the NCAA’s decision seems incredibly foolish. Young assuredly wants to help Ohio State win a national championship, but if the NCAA says he can’t, well, bummer. He’ll just have to remain injury free for the rest of the season before making tens of millions of dollars in April. Last year, Ohio State’s previous superstar, defensive end Nick Bosa, did this voluntarily as he dealt with minor injuries. He went on to be selected no. 2 in the draft, sign a $34 million contract with the 49ers, and become possibly the first rookie since Lawrence Taylor to win Defensive Player of the Year. And if the NCAA has its way and Wiseman has to sit out the rest of the year, he’ll be the third current American top-10 prospect to skip college basketball: LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton are playing professionally in Australia. Top prospects are already realizing they don’t need college sports once they’ve proved their worth to professional evaluators. Is the NCAA really sure it wants to police small-scale, past-tense payments to athletes, and ensure that some of the top prospects still playing college sports have to move on?
The NCAA seems weaker than ever. State governments and local courts are eroding its authority, and in fighting for its survival, it’s using the only tactic it has ever known: arbitrarily enforced, completely unnecessary justice. But the players it seeks to punish seem to have better options, and the schools it seeks to punish apparently don’t care.