Considering the concerns raised by several coaches, the NCAA isn’t lacking opinions, but boundaries. As the sport continues to stretch under the weight of NIL money and unrestricted movement, the voices questioning where this is all headed are only getting louder. And that tension surfaced again this week when Arkansas head coach John Calipari delivered another blunt critique.

In his latest media appearance, coach Calipari bashed the NCAA and transfer portal rules, focusing less on roster chaos and more on what he believes is getting lost in the process: education, stability, and long-term well-being for young players.

“If a kid transfers four times, is he going to graduate from that school? There’s no way you can’t graduate, so now you’re going to be done playing without a college degree,” he said, shedding light on how repeated transfers affect a player once basketball is over, especially when academics are disrupted year after year.

“You have no ties to the last school you went to… you’re offered $55,000 in your first job and you go, what $55,000? Do I have to show up? You got me an apartment or a car?”

While Calipari has no issue with players transferring, his frustration lies with how often it can and does happen. However, he also has a solution for it. As per his proposal, players can transfer freely once during their career, but any additional move should cost them a year, during which they need to sit on the bench.

“You can transfer once without penalty because you picked the wrong school. The coach lied to you… After that you got to sit,” he said. “If we cure the transfer rule, 70 percent of our problems go away.”

Soon after his comments went viral, TNT and CBS analyst and former Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl weighed in with another opinion. He took to X to shift the focus from individual programs to the system itself.

“At this point we have two options to save intercollegiate athletics,” Pearl wrote. “Congress gives the NCAA anti trust protections to make the old system work which is unfair to student athletes OR we have collective bargaining. The longer we wait, the more it costs everyone.”

Despite different approaches, Calipari and Pearl agree on one thing: the NCAA’s hands-off stance isn’t sustainable. Players can transfer year after year with few limits, while the NCAA continues to avoid setting clear boundaries.

Whether the concern is players leaving without degrees, a widening legal gray area, or a system losing structure by the season, the reality is the same: college basketball can’t function without guardrails. And the longer the leadership delays, the harder it becomes to protect the very athletes it claims to serve.

But this wasn’t the first time Coach Calipari has voiced his concerns in recent days. Earlier this month, he took aim at another consequence of expanded eligibility, the growing age gap in college basketball.

“There are a lot of older gentlemen with beards playing basketball in college right now,” he said. “The guy comes in, and he’s waving to his kids up in the seats… ‘Wait a minute. The guy’s got two kids. He’s still playing college basketball. Crazy thing. He’s using NIL for his first wife’s alimony, and now he’s still playing college basketball. Are we nuts?”

With coaches across the country growing more vocal and solutions still absent, the NCAA’s silence is becoming harder to justify.

Coaches across the NCAA Basketball are losing patience

Everyone knows about the NCAA’s recent decision regarding James Nnaji and Baylor University, where they have granted four years of eligibility to the 21-year-old after he was drafted in the NBA as the No. 31 overall pick in 2023. That incident has only raised fresh questions about eligibility limits, competitive balance, and how much oversight still exists in the post-NIL era.

For many coaches, Nnaji’s case became another example of a system operating without any conscience. After legendary coach Tom Izzo also went off and expressed his disappointment with the system, Gonzaga University head coach Mark Few was also among those frustrated with the direction this sport is heading.

“Our lack of leadership has really shown,” Few said during a post-game interview on Sunday after a win over Pepperdine. “Now it’s probably time to get some help from Congress, but they’re more screwed up than the NCAA.”

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Between Calipari’s repeated warnings, Bruce Pearl’s call for collective bargaining, and growing pushback from coaches across the country, one thing is becoming harder to ignore: NCAA basketball has reached a point where avoiding hard decisions is no longer an option, and unless they address these growing concerns, the sport as we know it today might never stay the same.