Wetzel: G League to the SEC? What are we doing here?

Last Saturday, Charles Bediako scored four points and grabbed three rebounds to help the Motor City Cruise defeat the Birmingham (Alabama) Squadron, 127-103. It was a G League road-game blowout.

This was a homecoming of sorts for Bediako, who played for the University of Alabama from 2021 to 2023. The three-year G League veteran apparently so enjoyed being back in the state that he promptly quit his job as a professional basketball player, moved to Tuscaloosa and reenrolled in college.

By Wednesday, the 7-footer had been granted a 10-day temporary restraining order that made him eligible to play for the Crimson Tide for the first time since the 2023 Sweet 16.

He’s now cleared for Alabama’s game Saturday against Tennessee.

Last week, it was the G League. This week, it’s the SEC.

College hoops has reached the rejected-Will-Ferrell-movie-scripts part of the season.

The understandable and proper reaction to the news that college teams are making midseason pickups off G League rosters is to call this the most ridiculous legal decision since McDonald’s got busted for serving hot coffee.

And it is.

Well, at least until you read Bediako’s petition and follow all the precedents from numerous other schools that produced the prior ridiculous legal decisions that led college athletics to this ridiculous point.

Then it might make sense, but nothing really makes sense.

To be clear, NCAA rules prohibit this.

“The NCAA has not and will not grant eligibility to any prospective or returning student-athletes who have signed an NBA contract,” the association said in a statement.

A circuit court judge in — surprise, surprise — Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, isn’t convinced that such a rule is legal.

After all, Baylor was able to add 2023 NBA draft pick James Nnaji to its midseason roster just this month. Not only was Bediako never drafted, but he also played far fewer professional games and minutes than Nnaji.

There is a strong counterargument that Nnaji didn’t play college hoops and then leave, as Bediako did after two seasons at Alabama. For as long as anyone can remember, leaving school for the pros — especially when you actually became a pro — ended your college career.

Maybe not any longer, though, because each of these rulings seems to beget an even crazier one, ridiculousness piling on ridiculousness, like a snowball cascading down a hill.

Who knows what’s next? Could a G League starting five all enroll at one school and try to make a run at the national title? Could an NFL quarterback spend his rookie season on a practice squad, or holding a clipboard, then return to the highest bidder for the College Football Playoff?

How about a jersey retirement night for an all-time great, who then pulls the uniform back down from the rafters so he can suit up for the game?

What are we doing here?

Well, we are living in the comical chaos that occurred when the NCAA and its various leaders — conference commissioners, university presidents, athletic directors and coaches — focused solely on trying to stop NIL payments and slept through the looming crisis of preserving the right to determine eligibility.

As such, Bediako is able to argue that denying him the right to play college basketball five semesters after he quit college basketball is a restraint-of-trade violation. He will presumably make more playing a couple of months for Alabama than he would have in the G League.

“The NCAA’s arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement of its eligibility standards is inflicting immediate and irreparable harm upon [Bediako],” said Darren Heitner, one of Bediako’s attorneys.

That might be true, but Bediako (and others) playing is inflicting immediate and irreparable harm on everyone’s ability to take college basketball seriously.

Among the issues here is that Bediako doesn’t even need to win the actual case surrounding his eligibility.

All he needs is the same local judge to grant him a temporary injunction at a hearing next week. That should provide him enough time to finish out the Alabama schedule, after which he could then drop the case and, depending on when the Tide lose in the NCAAs, actually try to return to the Motor City Cruise.

Talk about your One Shining Moment.

It’s why these legal arguments are so specious. They don’t even need to be quality arguments, but rather just enough of an argument to buy some time and cash some NIL checks.

The NCAA is virtually powerless here. It clearly needs some kind of protection to set eligibility rules so they aren’t constantly picked apart by savvy lawyers and county judges.

College athletics has wasted millions of dollars and many years on failed legal battles and doomed lobbying efforts in the long shot hope Congress would pass one-sided legislation.

But determining who is allowed to compete, and for how long, is an issue rooted in common sense and common principles. No offense to Bediako, but almost no one wants this, let alone 27-year-old quarterbacks or ninth-year point guards, or whatever comes next.

Seemingly every league — from T-ball to the NFL — has rules, calendars and procedures that determine how rosters are built. The NCAA should as well.

A simple, skinny federal eligibility bill that protects from this constant barrage of court cases is what the NCAA should be pushing Congress to adopt. Nothing more and nothing less. That’s a popular and bipartisan issue.

Unless you were hoping to see LeBron James in March Madness.

Originally published at ESPN