Student-Athlete or Free Agent?
With college football finally shuffling off stage like an aging rock star, college basketball has decided to crank up the speakers and throw the kind of house party that makes the neighbors call the cops.
Griffin is building for the long haul in a sport addicted to the short term. That doesn’t make him outdated. It makes him countercultural.
Coaches and a sizable portion of the traditional fan base across our fruited plain are not too happy over the NCAA’s latest eligibility circus, as schools roll out the red carpet for players with pro credentials. Nothing says “student-athlete” like someone who has already cashed a sizeable paycheck playing professionally.
College basketball has turned into the latest edition of the comeback tour. The NCAA has allowed former NBA draft pick James Nnaji to play immediately for Baylor, while Illinois and Utah roll out the welcome mat for former European pros Toni Bilic and Lucas Langarita.
Just when you think the circus tent could not get any bigger, Chicago Bulls small forward Trentyn Flowers, whose journey was a bit more drawn-out. Flowers went from high school to a Louisville commitment to professional basketball in Australia and finally back home in the NBA where he has played in eight games and is now shopping his basketball wares.
According to the NCAA, the chaos in college sports’ Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) Era has nothing to do with decades of NCAA micromanagement or shifting legal standards. Rather it is those rogue nationwide judges throwing the whole convoluted system into chaos while reducing opportunities for high school athletes.
This eligibility fiasco is just the opening act in the NCAA’s audition for an antitrust exemption. There is nothing like manufactured chaos to make a persuasive case for special treatment.
In a dazzling display of faith in bureaucratic speed, the NCAA has asked Congress for an assist in fixing their mess. When you need fast, decisive action, who better than the people who have not managed to pass a budget on time since 1997.
You can’t really blame the players; they are just cashing in on the buffet of opportunities laid out for them. That is the paradox of arrival — abundance is a blessing until it becomes a burden.
At the going rate don’t be surprised if LeBron James shows up for a “gap year” at Duke. After all, nothing says amateur athletics like a roster full of guys who have cashed checks bigger than the school’s endowment.
Welcome to The Wild Wild West of college hoops, where if the NCAA had even a flicker of humor, they would commission Robert Conrad as basketball czar, though first they would need to grab a shovel to find him.
The question is simple: student-athlete or professional player.
The NCAA’s identity crisis is not just a branding disaster; it is an engineered masterpiece in what happens when an institution ignores the values it claims to uphold.
As the NCAA remains in denial, the coaching fraternity is bewildered and the frustration is mounting. “We just want to know the rules so we can abide by them,” Purdue head coach Matt Painter said recently. “We don’t know what’s going on.”
“If you go pro, I don’t care what country you’re from, if you leave your name in, you cannot play college basketball,” said Arkansas head coach John Calipari.
As Bucknell opens Patriot League play at home at Sojka Pavillion on Saturday against longtime rival Lehigh, head coach John Griffin echoed both Painter and Calipari. “Once a player is drafted and participates in the NBA Summer League, that decision should mark a clear transition away from college athletics, Griffin said in a recent email. “Choosing to pursue the NBA path is a valid and respected option, but it should be a definitive one. That level of clarity would benefit players, programs, and the sport as a whole.”
Big time college sports have become the nation’s most chaotic commodities exchange, a place where players are traded, flipped, and repackaged faster than meme stocks. In this brave new world of instant returns and overnight reinvention, Bucknell’s John Griffin is something of an anachronism, a rotary phone in a 5G universe. Or, depending on whom you ask, the only adult left in the room.
Griffin, who played at Bucknell from 2004 to 2008, comes from the era when guards dove on the floor because it mattered, not because it made good NIL content. He helped power some of the strongest teams in the program’s 131‑year history, back when “development” wasn’t a dirty word and “continuity” wasn’t something you needed a waiver for. Now, as head coach, Griffin is doubling down on that slow‑cook philosophy in a sport that increasingly prefers the microwave.
Griffin is part of a shrinking but stubbornly unbothered cohort of coaches whose atavistic thinking still appeals to a certain kind of athlete who doesn’t need a GPS to find the gym. Griffin builds his roster “through high school, prep school, international prospects, and the transfer portal, identifying young men who align with Bucknell’s academic standards, competitive culture, and long-term development model.”
In 2026, that sentence reads like someone bragging about their vinyl collection at a Spotify convention.
And yet, for the right player, it is a breath of fresh air.
For others.… It is a fever dream that is nothing more than a flickering mirage of guaranteed minutes and SEC glory where dancing mascots chant nonstop “instant gratification” in perfect harmony.
The transfer portal has become college basketball’s express lane with no tolls, no speed limits, no questions asked. And last offseason, Bucknell watched its reigning Patriot League Player of the Year, junior Noah Williamson, merge into it with the confidence of a player who had never once been cut off in traffic from the low post to Route 80.
At Bucknell, Williamson was the sun, the moon, and the gravitational pull that kept the offense from floating into space. High‑usage, high‑minute, high‑production, the kind of player who could tilt a game by his mere presence. At Alabama, Williamson is a deep‑rotation cameo, getting single digit minutes that could fit inside a pair of media timeouts.
The contrast is not subtle. It is a billboard that bought ad time during the SEC Network halftime show.
To some, Williamson’s move is the natural next step: chase the money, the lights, follow the brand, and the promise of “more.” To others, it is the cautionary tale of a system that sells instant gratification like a late‑night infomercial that is polished, loud, and suspiciously lacking in contact information for refunds.
At Bucknell, the seven foot Williamson, a Latvia native, was a star on the picturesque Lewisburg, Pennsylvania campus. At Alabama, he’s a role player in a galaxy already overcrowded with five‑stars and future draft picks.
Griffin’s coaching is old school, a philosophy he inherited while growing up around his father’s St. Joseph’s teams in Philadelphia back when the biggest off‑court concern was practice time and homework, not agents and NIL negotiations.
Such a coaching philosophy that is rooted in patience, calculated, and forged in identity can look almost radical in comparison. Griffin is not anti‑portal; he is anti‑shortcut. He is not nostalgic; he is principled. And in a landscape where players reinvent themselves annually, he is betting on the power of staying put long enough to actually grow, a concept so foreign it might as well require a green card.
For some athletes, that is exactly the point: a place that sees them as more than a rental. For others, it is a relic from the Pleistocene Era.
But here is the twist: the so‑called “crazy” approach might be the one that endures. Because while the portal can offer opportunity, it can also offer illusion. And while the high‑major leap can elevate a career, it can just as easily shrink it.
Griffin is building for the long haul in a sport addicted to the short term. That doesn’t make him outdated. It makes him countercultural. And countercultures, history tells us, have a way of outlasting trends.
As Griffin put it, “At Bucknell, we know who we are, what we value, and how we want to develop players — on the court, in the classroom, and beyond basketball.”
As 2026 gets its legs, that might be the most radical statement of all.
(P.S. Bucknell won their Patriot League home opener over Lehigh this weekend: 72-65.)
READ MORE from Greg Maresca:
Eligibility, International Intrigue and NCAA Drama
Greg Maresca, a longtime columnist with the Sample News Group, served as the public address announcer for Bucknell’s men’s and women’s basketball for 23 years.