Auburn coach Steven Pearl warns of ‘slippery slope’ with NCAA eligibility cases at Alabama, Baylor
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Auburn’s Steven Pearl is only in his first season as the head coach on the Plains, which also represents the first head coaching job of his career.
But despite that and despite being only 38 years old, Pearl has already been around the college game for many years, as the son of longtime Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl and as someone who coached under Pearl from 2017 right up to last season. Steven Pearl also played at Tennessee, so he has a firm grasp of the sport from his experience and his bloodlines, and during an appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning on Thursday he warned of the consequences of the NCAA eligibility cases at Alabama and Baylor.
At Alabama, former Crimson Tide center Charles Bediako was granted a temporary restraining order against the NCAA, which made him eligible to immediately rejoin the program. Bediako spent the past 3 seasons in the NBA’s G League, but that didn’t stop a Tuscaloosa County judge from ruling on Wednesday that the 7-footer could return to college basketball and, even more, play right away this Saturday against Tennessee.
Meanwhile, at Baylor, there was a similar case last month of a player with professional experience coming to the college game, and it involved center James Nnaji, who was able to join the Bears in the middle of this season. Nnaji was the No. 31 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft and has played the past 4 seasons in the EuroLeague.
“It’s a slippery slope,” Pearl warned of the Alabama and Baylor issues. “Based on the rules we’re given or lack thereof, coaches are going to do what they have to do in order to win basketball games. That’s the landscape of where we are right now. … That doesn’t make it right, that doesn’t make it wrong.”
Here are Pearl’s full comments on the touchy subject that has entered into college basketball this season:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
