In Reply to: If this goes the way it is going now I think we can all see posted by ej on May 08, 2026 at 07:38:56
I think in many ways college basketball is better than it’s been in a really long time.
The product on the court last season was outstanding. There were so many weekends filled with matchup after matchup between great teams, and the overall quality of play felt incredibly high.
Players are staying in school longer now than they have in recent history. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re staying at the same school, but athletes like Bernard and Bailey—who in the past may have left early for different reasons—are now remaining in college because they can earn money while continuing to develop. Naturally, that leads to a better level of basketball overall.
I also think the sport is more competitive across the board. NIL has created opportunities for more programs to compete at a higher level. Schools like Kentucky and Kansas can no longer simply stockpile elite talent based on name recognition alone because there’s now real competition for those players. Duke seems to be the one program that has largely maintained its grip on five-star recruits, but overall, the landscape feels much more balanced.
At the very least, the financial side of college basketball is now out in the open. I understand that this new era may create challenges for UCLA, but the reality is we were already losing many of those recruiting battles anyway. Personally, I believe UCLA has far too many advantages not to be competitive at this level. And if we aren’t competitive, the answer isn’t for everyone else to come back to the pack—it’s for us to adapt and catch up.
We'll have to see how it all plays out.