The NCAA has announced key changes for college basketball. They won’t likely be enough to root out the problems with the sport, but they’ll certainly be felt.
In the wake of the ongoing FBI investigation related to college basketball, the NCAA announced key changes to the sport on Wednesday.
Earlier in the year, the Commission on College Basketball released recommended changes, and the NCAA is implementing most of them.
Among the most notable changes:
More from Lawless Republic
- BYU Football: Comparing the new and old schedules
- BYU Football: Have the Cougars hit an all time low?
- BYU Football needs to fix issues before Notre Dame
- BYU Football: Why fans shouldn’t be so worried about USF
- How to watch BYU Cougars football in 2022
- Players who declare for the NBA draft but go undrafted can return to school and play.
- “Elite” high school and college players (as determined by USA Basketball) can hire an agent, as long as that agent is certified by the NCAA. The high school provision will only apply if the NBA’s one-and-done rule is abolished.
- High schoolers can now take up to 15 official visits, beginning the summer before their junior year.
- Schools must pay for tuition, fees, and books for athletes who leave school early but return to the same school to finish their degree.
- Coaches and staff must now report any athletics-related income that they receive outside of their salary from the school.
- Stronger penalties for violations, including longer postseason bans.
- Pending approval, the NCAA Board of Directors will now include five members who have no ties to the NCAA or member schools.
For BYU Basketball, two of those changes will impact the program more than others.
First is the ability for players to return to school if they aren’t drafted. Expect to see the draft pool expand drastically under the new rule, and athletes won’t have to withdraw their name from the draft beforehand like Yoeli Childs did this year.
There’s a good chance that we’ll see more Cougars enter the draft early as a result, but good portion would probably end up back with BYU anyway.
Who knows what Eric Mika and Elijah Bryant would have done had this option been open to them.
The second change that will impact BYU is the increase in official visits. The coaching staff will be able to get more recruits to visit campus, and hopefully snag a few more to play for the Cougars.
Will these changes drastically change the landscape of college basketball?
Probably not.
Will these changes strike at the heart of the problems and scandals that plague college basketball?
Probably not.
But at least it’s a step, and it will be interesting to see how these changes impact BYU Basketball in the future.