Welcome back to another year of CBS Sports' Candid Coaches feature. College basketball insiders Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander surveyed nearly 100 men's Division I coaches in the thick of the offseason; as always, interviewees were given the promise of anonymity in a swap for honest and enlightening answers on a medley of topics. Be it some of the most high-profile names in the game or assistants at low-major programs, Norlander and Parrish spanned the sport to get a wide range of feedback.
This year's survey had nine questions, and this is the first in our 2026 series. The biggest story in college basketball over the past three-plus weeks has been the spate of court-issued injunctions that have pushed back against the NCAA's decision to invoke a new eligibility landscape that officially went into effect less than two months ago. If you're reading a college basketball story in the middle of August, chances are you're mostly aware of what's going on here, but just in case you're not all the way up to speed, here's a summary of what's had college sports abuzz since July.
In late June, the NCAA ratified a new age-based eligibility structure. Moving forward, all Division I athletes will have five years to play as many as five seasons of college sports, with the entry date "no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday." It used to be that students had five years to play four seasons. Now, instead, in an effort to streamline the eligibility clock and reduce the number of lawsuits, the new model is a trade-off is to eliminate almost all waivers and redshirt seasons (with rare exceptions for "pregnancy, active-duty military service and official religious missions.") But, but, but ... the 2025-26 senior class that graduated a few months ago did not get a five-year clock (nor was it discussed as a possibility when this class began college in the early 2020s).
Predictably, lawsuits have taken shape around the country in California, Tennessee, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia and Florida; more are sure to come, probably another by the end of this week. For the time being, dozens of 2026 college grads are moving forward with hopes their cases will win out. Meanwhile, the NCAA's lead lawyer recently put out a statement reinforcing the organization's unwillingness to double back on its June vote.
High-profile teams — Louisville, Arizona, Texas Tech, Houston, Tennessee, Gonzaga — have recently received commitments from players banking on a bonus fifth season, scraping up even more money to deepen their rosters with de facto free agency acquisitions in the depth of the offseason. A handful of players who could be seen trying to cut it at Summer League a month ago are now seriously looking into returning to college ... and hoping they can find the right judge to allow them back in. The topic is obviously polarizing, beyond all other reasons, because of the NCAA's timing of the rule change.
It's empowering an unprecedented surge: basketball programs across the country are recruiting and adding players four-plus months after the end of the previous season. Given how fervid this issue is, we asked ... Like clockwork, every year Candid Coaches has a question that prompts significantly more responses and longwinded answers/reasoning in comparison to the rest of the survey.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
