One Player Never Signed. One Did.
The NCAA Rewrote Its Rules to Stop Deciding Who Gets to Play.
Two men entered the 2023 NBA Draft. James Nnaji went 31st, never signed a contract, played professionally in Europe, and enrolled at Baylor in December 2025 — the NCAA cleared him for four years of college eligibility. Charles Bediako went undrafted, played three G League seasons and held a two-way NBA contract, then sued the NCAA when it wouldn’t let him return to Alabama. He won a restraining order, played five games, and then lost for good.
Same draft class, opposite outcomes, no coherent rule separating them — just an ad hoc line between a player who signed a contract and one who didn’t. On April 15, 2026, the NCAA Division I Cabinet tried to fix that, replacing the contract-signing standard with a bright-line draft-withdrawal deadline.
The fix did not end the legal exposure it was built to avoid. It only calibrated it — softened once already under threat of an antitrust challenge, and still facing at least four active lawsuits from players caught under the old standard.
- 44 days — Baylor's Nnaji cleared to play in December 2025; Bediako's injunction denied Feb. 9, 2026 — opposite eligibility outcomes from the same 2023 draft class · Source: ESPN, CBS Sports
- 15 — class-of-2022 athletes suing the NCAA over eligibility rules in Borovicanin v. NCAA, still pending after the April 15 fix · Source: Sportico
- 4 — active eligibility lawsuits against the NCAA — Borovicanin, Campbell, Fuller, and Washington — as of July 2026 · Source: Sportico
- July 31, 2026 — hard deadline for schools to file old-rule waiver and extension requests before the new prospect-eligibility rules take over · Source: NCAA
Before April 15, the NCAA drew the eligibility line at contract signing. A prospect who entered the draft and signed a professional contract lost college eligibility for good. A prospect who went unpicked or unsigned, and later played professionally without ever signing an NBA contract, could in theory still come back — the rule never squarely addressed what “professional” meant absent a signature.
James Nnaji tested that gap and won. Drafted 31st overall by Charlotte in 2023, the Nigerian center never signed an NBA contract, instead playing professionally in Europe for two seasons. When he enrolled at Baylor in December 2025, the NCAA cleared him — the first former NBA draft pick ever ruled eligible for college basketball. Charles Bediako tested the same gap and lost. Undrafted in 2023, he spent three G League seasons plus a two-way contract with the San Antonio Spurs, then sought a return to Alabama. The NCAA said no. Bediako sued, won a restraining order, and played five games before a judge denied his preliminary injunction on February 9, 2026 — a ruling the Alabama Supreme Court upheld, on the theory that any NBA or G League roster spot, contract or not, closed the door Nnaji had walked through.
“Obviously super disappointed... I didn't think it ever should have gotten to court. I thought the NCAA should have made him eligible.”
Nate Oats, Alabama Head Basketball Coach — on the Bediako ruling
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey filed a court affidavit in the Bediako litigation defending the NCAA’s eligibility framework as necessary to preserve a clear line between amateur and professional status. It did not resolve the underlying inconsistency — it defended the NCAA’s discretion to draw the line somewhere, without explaining why Nnaji and Bediako landed on opposite sides of it.
The Cabinet’s answer, adopted April 15 and effective for prospects enrolling in fall 2026-27, replaces the contract-signing standard with a bright-line withdrawal deadline. Prospects who enter an opt-in professional draft — the NBA is the headline case — must formally withdraw by a legislated deadline to preserve eligibility. Miss it, and eligibility is gone regardless of whether a contract ever gets signed. Every prospect gets one penalty-free draft entry. The rule doesn’t touch sports drafted without opting in, such as baseball and men’s ice hockey.
Two other changes rode along. Prospects may now accept prize money before enrolling without losing eligibility, a direct result of the Brantmeier v. NCAA settlement. And prospects may sign pro agents before enrolling, mirroring NIL representation rules already on the books; the Cabinet separately directed staff to draft agent-conduct safeguards, since a prospect arriving on campus with an active pro agent is a genuinely new arrangement to police.
The version adopted April 15 is not the version proposed April 1. The original draft-bar language would have made any prospect who remained in a professional draft past its final decision point permanently ineligible — no withdrawal deadline, no exceptions for undrafted players. Sports attorney Mit Winter flagged the problem immediately: “If the current rule is changed to the proposed rule, it essentially creates a blanket rule that if you ever remain in the draft, you lose your NCAA eligibility.” Attorney Darren Heitner went further, warning that “any rule foreclosing simultaneous participation in a professional draft evaluation and the collegiate eligibility process could face a Rule of Reason challenge” — antitrust language the NCAA has taken seriously since NCAA v. Alston.
The clearest illustration of what the blanket version would have broken was Dink Pate, a 20-year-old G League guard recruited by Kentucky and other programs. Undrafted in 2025, Pate never went through a normal draft cycle — he turned pro out of high school through the G League’s Ignite-successor pathway, then wanted the option to play college ball. The original stricter proposal could have barred a player like him without ever giving him the chance the deadline-based system is designed to preserve.
Greg Sankey's affidavit in the Bediako case lays out the NCAA's argument for why eligibility lines have to be drawn somewhere — even when the line produces results as inconsistent as Nnaji and Bediako.
MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher, the Cabinet’s vice chair, framed the vote as the first of several planned moves: “Division I is currently undergoing an extensive review of all eligibility rules to determine what makes the most sense in the current era of college sports. These changes are the first phase of that process.” Twelve days later, on April 27, the Board of Directors directed the Cabinet to advance a far broader overhaul — an age-based model replacing season-counting and redshirt tracking altogether.
On June 23, Division I adopted that broader model: a five-year eligibility window measured from either initial enrollment or the year after a prospect’s 19th birthday, eliminating the old redshirt-and-season-counting system entirely. The April 15 rules were the opening move in that redesign — the withdrawal deadline and the age-based clock both replace ad hoc, case-by-case rulings with a standard a compliance office can apply the same way every time.
DI Board of Directors formally directs the Cabinet to advance an age-based eligibility model — the next phase after April's prospect-eligibility rules, aimed at replacing season-counting with a cleaner, harder-to-litigate standard.
The NCAA president selling all of this to coaches and litigators is Charlie Baker — a former Republican governor of Massachusetts (2015-2023), noted here once as background, since he speaks in an NCAA administrative capacity throughout this story. Baker’s pitch is durability: a rule tied to an athlete’s age and a fixed deadline is harder to relitigate case by case than one that turns on whether a specific prospect signed a specific piece of paper.
None of the rewriting erased players already caught under the old standard. Borovicanin v. NCAA, filed in Hamilton County, Ohio before Judge Christopher Wagner, represents 15 class-of-2022 athletes — brought by attorneys Darren Heitner and Ryan Downton, the same Heitner who warned about antitrust exposure at the drafting stage. It remains pending as of July 2026, according to Sportico, alongside three more active suits: DeJuan Campbell’s federal antitrust claim in Illinois, Cohen Fuller’s Nevada case over how junior-college and NAIA seasons should count, and Jalen Washington’s Tennessee suit. None of the claims have been adjudicated; each remains an allegation the NCAA disputes.
The April 15 rule change does not automatically resolve every eligibility question left open under the old contract-signing standard. Schools with prospects whose eligibility was governed by pre-April rules face a July 31, 2026 deadline to file waiver or extension requests under the old framework before the new prospect-eligibility rules fully take over for the 2026-27 enrollment cycle.
The honest accounting: the NCAA did not close its legal exposure on April 15 — it moved it. A blanket draft-entry bar would have drawn an antitrust challenge almost immediately, by the attorneys’ own read of Rule of Reason doctrine after Alston. The withdrawal deadline the Cabinet adopted instead is more defensible, but it is still a rule written in reaction to two players from the same class who got different answers to the same question — and it arrived after, not before, a class of 15 athletes had already sued over the standard it replaces.
James Nnaji and Charles Bediako entered the same 2023 draft and got opposite eligibility rulings under a standard that turned on whether a contract got signed. The NCAA’s April 15, 2026 fix replaces that standard with a bright-line withdrawal deadline — softened once already under threat of an antitrust challenge, and feeding directly into the broader age-based eligibility model adopted in June. What it has not done is end the litigation: at least four lawsuits, including a 15-athlete class action, are still working through the courts over eligibility calls the new rule arrived too late to prevent.
