What’s the best word to describe how the University of Kansas’s men’s basketball team has entered this new era of college sports? 

Along with me, please point your internet browser to a thesaurus. 

For some other programs, you might choose “mercenary.” These teams have won big by luring away seasoned, proven, older players from other teams. In the mercenary column? Indiana University football and Michigan basketball. We prefer the word, “champions.”

You might tag still others with “profligate.” When an athletic department recruits a squad of young millionaires to a historic program, the expectations are higher than a March Madness second round loss (by almost 20). Yes, I am talking about you, Kentucky basketball. 

A handful of schools have gotten downright “litigious.” The University of Washington recently sued its quarterback, who waffled back and forth about whether he would return to campus last year. Meanwhile, the University of Georgia is seeking $390,000 from a former defensive end after he transferred to the University of Missouri. See you in court.

The atmosphere at Kansas basketball in the nascent days of the NIL era is different. Call it “dramatic.” During the past 12 months, the emotional rollercoaster ride has tested Jayhawk fans who previously basked in constant conference championships and juggernaut status. 

As an instructor at the Lawrence campus, I have watched the mood among students over the past few years go from disbelief (“There’s no way that we won’t win the Big XII!”) to protest (“It’s just not fair!“). This year I was surprised by the mid-week apathy among students. Basically no one was talking about the Jayhawks in my classrooms, a rare symptom from those in crimson and blue.

Many of the storylines that have defined this time at KU are tethered to the financial tumult that has shaken college sports. Athletes deserved compensation, but when the NCAA restrictions fell, pandemonium reigned.

The millions of dollars in players’ pockets have unsteadied all campuses, but perhaps “The Hill” most of all.

Things are looking up

Earning the word choice of dramatic means plenty of ups: Headlines! Recruits! Big wins! A star coach! 

Last week brought another highlight. Wednesday morning, my gym blared the news from sports channels on big screens in every direction: The nation’s top high school player is coming to Allen Fieldhouse. 

The consensus top recruit, Tyran Stokes, might carry the Jayhawks during his expected one-year stay in Kansas before departing as a forecasted No. 1 overall NBA draft pick. Landing a dominant player like this, one who can maraud down the lane but also square up from beyond the arc, signals recruiting swagger for Bill Self and his assistants.

Last year, the Jayhawks also landed the top recruit, Darryn Peterson. With Peterson at point, the Jayhawks climbed into the top 10 rankings from the Associated Press writers poll during Week 16. Eight wins in a row — two of them against the top two ranked teams nationally — would keep most fanbases happy for years.  

Combine this with the constant, historic revelry of Allen Fieldhouse. Students still camp out for choice game-day seats and the chance to be in front of the national TV cameras. 

These high points likely helped draw Stokes to Kansas.

Must it come down?

But oh how the drama has swerved: Early tournament exit! Possible retirement! Campus controversy! An aloof superstar!

One KU basketball narrative rose to the top this season. Fans nationwide knew both that KU both had a gamechanger in Peterson but also that he wasn’t playing as much as everyone expected. 

Fans and commentators threw shade about his commitment to the team, hinting that the big payout for his name, image and likeness should have spurred him toward being available to play more minutes for the Jayhawks. 

Perhaps, they whispered, he was saving himself for an even bigger NBA payday. This high-profile swirl of money and playing time is a mid-season college storyline that could only happen in 2026.

In this pay-for-play climate, many wonder how long veteran Hall of Famers like Bill Self will wait before retirement. Today’s college hoops atmosphere is certainly a world away from 1993, when he was recruiting players to an Oral Roberts University team that was 6-21. Losing in the second round of the tournament this year made the coaching situation still more precarious. 

Add in Self’s recent health troubles and it feels like the KU coaching throne is wobbling for the first time in decades, which should terrify the Jayhawks. 

Teams have surged up and down in the rankings for years before players were being paid. Nevertheless, Kansas this year yo-yo-ed in rankings from No. 19 preseason, to unranked, to No. 8, to an embarrassing last-second flame-out during the tournament. 

Consider also Nebraska, a team that didn’t receive a single vote in the AP preseason poll and also a team that didn’t crack the top 25 until week 6. They finished second to the national champions in the Big Ten standings and made it to the Sweet 16.

In watching college basketball today, we are crossing our fingers each season that a misfit band of transfer students gels together with heralded freshmen. But, in doing so, we often fail to evaluate these hastily assembled squads, this year’s KU team included.

All of this ignores the elephant in the room — or in this case, the elephant sitting smack dab in the middle of Jayhawk Boulevard. The athletic and academic interests on KU’s campus have confronted one another in a way I haven’t seen during my 13 academic years at KU. 

When KU faculty members publicized a no-confidence vote in the university leadership this year, athletics was not just the subtext, it was the text. Associate professor Misty Heggeness (whom I once profiled for the Reflector) challenged the university’s plan to use KU’s general fund to cover athlete payments. 

“It’s just a little bit frustrating that there’s this disconnect that that we as a university have been put in the position to have to try to scrounge around for pennies in other coffers to cover these student athlete salaries,” she told KCUR.  

Social media predictably seized on the situation, claiming, “Kansas Faculty Revolts Over Athlete Pay…This Is Bigger Than You Think.”

Yet that headline might not even do it justice. After all, how many of these KU basketball storylines — for better or worse — do you connect to the new atmosphere of college sports? In short, it is defining the sport. 

And maybe the university. 

The lauded signing of Tyran Stokes might be the ticket to a national championship — money well spent by a university that loves basketball and has a generational coaching talent to guide him. 

But the era of NIL tells us that the next year could also be a plummet. Perhaps a high school superstar, already famous for his temper, becomes disenchanted with the college game and dooms his team (a campus?) to not only basketball losses, but financial peril. 

In the high stakes Wild West of 2026 college sports, where fortunes lean on the compensation of 18-year-olds, we must brace for both: winning and losing.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.