The power conferences have drawn a line in the sand.
Earlier this week, the Big 12 Conference followed the lead of the Big Ten and SEC by announcing a policy prohibiting players who had joined professional rosters from returning to Big 12 programs. The ACC and Mountain West soon announced similar policies.
Other prominent leagues, like the basketball-based Big East and the reconfigured Pac-12, have yet to announce policies regarding the eligibility of former pros.
With athletes who spent time in NFL training camps and on NBA Summer League rosters attempting to run it back in college — highlighted by LSU attempting to add former pros to its football and men’s basketball teams — the power conferences and the MWC have adopted policies that essentially reset the bar back to previous NCAA eligibility standards before lawsuits and injunctions altered those standards.
“I think we have an obligation to protect the integrity of college sports,” Colorado athletic director Fernando Lovo said. “I understand that we’re in a kind of unique circumstance right now with the age-based eligibility, and the way some of these student-athletes could have potentially received another year depending on the time it was implemented. But we want to protect the integrity of college sports. There’s still some flexibility within the rule, that if you kind of read between the lines that does allow for some student-athletes that may have not signed a contract but gone to a mini-camp or summer league to where they would have otherwise stayed. So it made sense.
“I think you see the power conferences, we all feel the same way. We have different priorities, each conference, but I think at the end of the day we care about the integrity of college sports.”
The pro eligibility policies are a separate headache for the NCAA from the five-for-five lawsuits across the nation, and the Big 12’s new policy regarding former pros has no bearing on the ruling that ended the eligibility of CU defensive lineman hopeful Ezra Christensen, who had been seeking a sixth season.
The Big 12 was the first of the conferences to include all sports in its pro policy, and the new standards bars athletes who declared for professional drafts without withdrawing before the prescribed deadlines, those who have been listed on pro rosters and those who have signed pro contracts from returning to Big 12 rosters. Neither the CU football team nor the men’s basketball team has a past pro on the prospective rosters, and the new policy doesn’t change pre-enrollment standards for international recruits.
The CU men’s basketball team had a player last year, Alon Michaeli, who was a low-level pro in his native Isreal. Coach Tad Boyle’s program features two freshmen this season who had a similar background in Australia, Goc Malual and Alex Dickeson.
Of course, with litigation ongoing throughout the country regarding the five-for-five eligibility matters, it only is a matter of time until the Big 12 or another conference is sued by a former pro hoping to return to school. Lovo said he and the rest of CU’s Big 12 peers are confident the new policy will withstand legal scrutiny.
“When you look at conference-level governance, I think we do feel pretty comfortable in the sense that what we’ve implemented as a rule is enforceable,” Lovo said. “We trust our commissioner and we have great legal counsel at the conference that really kind of thinks through all these different situations and scenarios. We’re hopeful that it is (enforceable). I guess what we’ve learned in this world is you can never say never. You never really know what could be coming around the corner.
“But we were very intentional about the way in which we discussed the rule. We never intended it to be more punitive than the NCAA would be. This is to supplement, to provide another level, another layer, of protection. We feel pretty good that it will be enforceable.”
