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.

The transfer portal — and the debate surrounding it — dominates college sports.

Now, a similar concept is being debated in Ohio high school athletics — whether students should be allowed to play for schools they do not attend.

That idea is part of a broader set of proposed rule changes that could reshape how Ohio handles athletic transfers if approved in a statewide vote of school districts.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association released its list of referendum issues earlier this month, with voting open through May 15. A simple majority is needed to change bylaws.

The main focus of many of the issues proposed include how transfers may be approved or even allowed — including potentially playing for a different school than the one a student attends.

The proposed Issue 2B would alter the bylaws by creating an exception to allow certain students playing sports at schools they do not attend.

The exception would state that if an athlete’s current school does not sponsor a team sport — such as football, soccer and tennis — and another school does that is located within 20 miles of what is described as the “most direct route,” that student could join the other school’s team. Superintendents of both districts would need to agree to the arrangement to grant the exception.

The exception would also allow a student who lives in a multi-school district to have their superintendent assign them directly to another school’s team within the district for the same reasoning.

A similar measure was voted on and turned down by a 406-393 margin in 2022. The language differed slightly in that vote, stating the new school district had to directly border the student’s current school.

Currently, all students attending a public school are only allowed to play sports for their school. Students attending private schools may play for a public school’s team only if they reside within the district.

An example of 20 miles in the Miami Valley is the distance between Centerville High School and Vandalia Butler High School, or Dunbar High School to Xenia High School.

Other transfer-related bylaw changes proposed would alter the definition of a transfer to allow a student that changed schools but returns to their original one to immediately participate in sports without penalty. Another could let a student maintain full eligibility if transfers are needed to “protect the student’s physical or mental well-being” as agreed upon by superintendents.

Modified NIL language is also being proposed. A new bylaw specifically stating athletes may enter into agreements with agents solely for marketing purposes would be created, and another could modify current rules to make all athletes report all NIL deals within 14 days of disclosure.

These votes take place each year to keep ahead of changing times. It is unusual to see close to a singular focus for many of the issues presented.

“It is an oddity,” Northmont athletic director Micah Harding said. “A lot of the bylaws relate to transfers, and every year they’re revising and editing language that’s in there to accommodate the changes that are coming up, a new situation that has never occurred, and trying to make sure they have that covered.”

What concerns are being raised?Call it school pride. Representing your community. Creating a sense of belonging.

Playing for the school you attend helps create all of that when an athlete gets to compete. If the sport isn’t an option for public school students, they currently are out of luck.

“There’s opportunities for private school kids to go play, but there’s not those opportunities for public schools,” Harding said. “I’m not crazy about the idea of kids going to one school and playing at another. There probably are some exceptions. … Probably not an ideal situation to have kids crossing over borders and things like that, but I think they’re trying to account there’s an option for private school kids and not public school kids.”

Many school districts also do not have open enrollment. It has not been clarified how the bylaw potentially could play a part in choosing potential school options for those districts.

Tippecanoe athletic director Kregg Creamer said he believes keeping the benefits of living within the school district played a key role in the district choosing not to invoke open enrollment.

He said the environment is controlled so future plans and opportunities for students both in and out of the classroom can be properly developed based on the overall enrollment numbers they wish to achieve.

“The concern I have is if these new opportunities, for some, would be coming at the expense of others? Meaning, would an opportunity for some students enrolled in a different district potentially take away opportunities from students that live in our district? That is something that I struggle with,” he said.

Creamer added he does not know the right answer to those questions.

“How do you explain that to some of your district residents and taxpayers?” Northeastern athletic director Jake Buchholtz said. “Your kid goes here, but he’s not playing or she’s not playing in a particular sport, because another kid from another school district is coming here and is better than yours. That’s a challenge.”

Potential impactsSome schools in the northern Miami Valley — like Russia, Newton, Botkins and Houston, for example — don’t offer football. What if 30 kids from those schools decide they want to play at a nearby school that offers football?

Wayne Local Schools recently tabled a vote which could have imposed a $750 pay-for-play per sport to all student-athletes.

The costs to conduct athletics does not seem to be going down. School districts are trying to find ways to keep things affordable, but unexpected costs associated with new roster numbers would keep budgets on edge.

Buchholtz believes some of the transfer rules make sense to level the playing field, but after taking a deeper look sees several potential ripple effects that could create new financial and competitive balance issues.

“As an athletic director, that’s 30 extra helmets, 30 extra pairs of shoulder pads,” he said. “It’s (tough) in sports where it is really expensive kind of per pupil. If your school’s district is one that charges pay to play, you do get that money, but it’s not like your district is seeing an increase in tax revenue to help offset those costs.”

Harding said he estimates Northmont is losing out on $1.5 million in state funding during the coming year based on recent state legislation. He believes lawmakers are constantly keeping the OHSAA on their toes to remain in alignment.

“I think it’s a combination, honestly, of two things that are constantly changing,” Harding said. “They’re encountering new situations, and so the OHSAA is trying to do their best to make sure they have everything covered, and then state legislators, you know, keep poking their nose into high school sports.”

Many districts are members of conferences with similar enrollment numbers to keep playing fields equal from the standpoint of potential contributors.

The 4-3-1 bylaw would only affect those participating in team sports — golf is not included while tennis is — but it wouldn’t take much of an influx of kids from outside of the district coming in to start shifting levels of competition.

“If we’re the Ohio Heritage Conference and we’re a predominantly Division V conference with a few D-VI and D-VII (schools) and Northeastern gets 30 players (from a school that doesn’t offer football), do you think the OHC is going to be super thrilled with Northeastern?” Bucholtz said. “I would venture to say no. I mean, it would be a good problem for us in terms of numbers right? And that’s where things could get a little murky.”

Inquiries from parents occur all the time, Harding said. Northmont being surrounded by smaller communities leads to interested parties finding out what they need to do to get their kids playing sports their school may not offer.

How has NIL been working?The noise surrounding name, image and likeness deals for Ohio high school athletes has been quiet since passed in late 2025.

The exact number of student-athletes agreeing to deals is unknown, however it’s estimated to be under 100 reported deals in total over the six months it has been in effect.

As predicted by experts like Dr. Scott Grant, such as when he told this outlet before the emergency November 2025 vote to expect most NIL compensation to involve free food, apparel and the like, that seems to be the case that administrators are hearing. Thousands of dollars, let alone millions, does not have a market in Ohio.

“There’s a lot of getting a kid to post on his Twitter, his Instagram or whatever kind of deal they’ve come up with and gets a free donut or whatever, a lot of that,” Harding said. “Obviously the most pressing part is (Jamier Brown) at Wayne transferring to Big Walnut as that’s right next door to us in our league, but that’s one of the outliers. There’s very few of the Browns.”

Harding believes it would be positive if agents got involved with brokering NIL deals. He said having experienced eyes look over the language of the contracts would be more beneficial than the average person figuring out what’s good and what’s not.)

OHSAA REFERENDUM ITEMS

Here are summarized language of all 12 referendum issues for high schools, middle school and administrative issues.

Constitution Articles (1 Issue – Voted on by High School Principals):

ISSUE 1C – Constitution Article 8, Amendments to the Constitution and Bylaws (Modification)

Would allow the OHSAA Board of Directors to reinstate a bylaw or constitutional provision that was previously removed to comply with state law, if that law is later repealed. This eliminates the need for an emergency referendum and allows the rule to take effect immediately as it was last approved by the membership.

7th & 8th Grade Ballot (3 Issues):

ISSUE 1B – Bylaw 4-2-2, Exceptions 1 & 2, 7th & 8th Grade Age Exceptions (Modifications) AND

ISSUE 2B – Bylaw 4-3-4, Exception 1, 7th & 8th Grade Semesters Exception (Modification)

Would revise the current requirement that a student must have no impact on the outcome of a contest to qualify for the requested exception, changing it to require that the student does not have a significant impact. This allows students who play a limited role to still be eligible.

ISSUE 3B – Bylaw 4-4-5 Exception 1, 7th & 8th Grade Academic Hardship Exception (Modification)

Would remove the requirement that a student must have been withdrawn or removed from school during the immediately preceding grading period for the exception to apply. Instead, the student or family must provide documentation showing that a hardship existed at the time their ineligibility occurred.

Bylaw Articles (8 Issues – Voted on by High School Principals):

ISSUE 1B – Bylaw 4-1-4, Member of an Interscholastic Team (Modification)

Would add language to clarify that a school is considered to have sponsored a sport once its team participates in a regular-season contest and not a preseason event. This helps determine student eligibility to participate elsewhere, either under state law or Issue 2B’s bylaw exception if to be approved, when their school of attendance cancels its season.

ISSUE 2B – Bylaw 4-3-1, Enrollment & Attendance, Exc. 8, Non-Enrolled Participation (New Exception)

Would allow students at an OHSAA member public school that does not sponsor a particular team sport to participate in that sport at another OHSAA member public school, provided on two conditions. The first would be the other school is within 20 miles and the superintendents of both schools approve the arrangement. Google maps will be used to help determine the distance.

In multi–high school districts, students whose school does not offer a specific sport may be assigned to participate at another school within the same district.

ISSUE 3B — Bylaw 4-4-1 Exception 1, High School Academic Hardship Exception (Modification)

Would remove the requirement that a student must have been withdrawn or removed from school during the immediately preceding grading period for the exception to apply. Instead, the student or family must provide documentation showing that a hardship existed at the time their ineligibility occurred.

ISSUE 4B – Bylaw 4-6-2, Exceptions 4 & 6, Residency Exceptions (Modifications)

Modifications to Exception 4 would permit a student whose parents live outside the state of Ohio, but who have been continuously enrolled within the same member public school district since the start of 6th grade, to participate at the member high school in which they are enrolled. The modification would bring consistency to requirements.

Parallel modifications to two other exceptions would add language to permit students whose parents live outside the state of Ohio, but who have been continuously enrolled within the same member school district since the start of 4th grade, to participate within that district/system in 7th and 8th grade. Applicable for both public and non-public members.

ISSUE 5B – Bylaw 4-7-2, Definition of Transfer (New Note)

Would exempt a student from being subject to the transfer bylaw when they change their enrollment to a different but return to the same school of attendance without participating in any sport while enrolled at the other school.

ISSUE 6B – Bylaw 4-7-2, Exception 1, Bona Fide Change of Residence (New Definition)

Would codify a formal definition of a bona fide change of residence. The definition would require a student’s parents to fully relinquish all responsibility for their previous residence, such as by selling it, leasing it to a non-family member, transferring it to an LLC for business purposes, or terminating the lease, in order for this exception to apply. The new language also gives discretion to review and address cases where this requirement has not been fully met.

ISSUE 7B – Bylaw 4-7-8, Superintendent’s Memorandum of Understanding, Transfer (New Bylaw)

Would allow a transfer student to have their eligibility fully restored upon a transfer if the Superintendents or Heads of School from both OHSAA member school systems enter into a memorandum of understanding confirming that the transfer is necessary to protect the student’s physical or mental well-being or to address other appropriate extenuating circumstances. This exception may be used up to two times during a student’s high school career. If approved, three other bylaws would be stricken.

ISSUE 8B – Bylaw 4-11 NIL (Modifications and New Section)

Would add clarifying language on two bylaws to ensure consistent application within NIL regulations. Also creates a new bylaw to allow students to enter into agreements with athlete agents solely for marketing purposes. Any such agreement must also be disclosed within 14 days.