Not long after his team suffered a humbling defeat, Tad Boyle received a call from a tried and true colleague in the coaching profession. Tom Izzo wasn’t calling to offer condolences, even after the Colorado men’s basketball team suffered a deflating loss against Northern Colorado. Izzo, a Naism ith Basketball Hall of Famer now in his 31st season as the head coach at Michigan State, was calling to bend Boyle’s ear about the latest seismic shift in the college game. As Boyle’s Buffaloes get set to begin Big 12 Conference play Saturday at Arizona State (3 p.m. MT, ESPN2), it’s another one of CU’s league rivals that have garnered the week’s biggest college basketball headlines. Baylor this week welcomed the addition of 7-footer James Nnaji, who is set to make his collegiate debut when the Bears visit TCU for their Big 12 opener Saturday. Nnaji was the first pick of the second round of the 2023 NBA Draft (31st overall), yet in an ever-changing era of college athletics in which the rules seemingly are rewritten on the fly, Nnaji was granted NCAA eligibility. Two of the more outspoken, and visible, coaches across the country to speak out on the matter have been Izzo and Arkansas coach John Calipari, whose relationship with Boyle dates back to when Calipari was an assistant at Kansas when Boyle played there. Boyle said he recently spoke with Calipari as well. “It makes no sense to me,” Boyle said. “I’ve listened to Tom Izzo, and I’ve talked to Tom Izzo. He called me after the Northern Colorado game. I’ve listened to John Calipari, and I’ve talked to John Calipari. And both those guys, what they said and how they said it, I couldn’t agree more. And I think 95% of coaches feel the way they do. “The reality is, is as coaches, we’re all self-preservationists. And as athletic directors, we’re all self-preservationists. That’s human nature. The problem that we have is we’ve got nobody — and when I say nobody, nobody — who’s looking at college athletics and saying, ‘What’s best for college football? What’s best for college basketball? What’s best for women’s college basketball? What’s best for women’s soccer?’ Nobody’s thinking of it. It’s all, ‘What’s best for me?’ Not what’s best for the game, what’s best for college athletics. Those are big issues and big problems.” Nnaji never signed a pro contract and never enrolled in college, but he played games in the NBA Summer League and has been playing professionally overseas. He’s not the only player with pro ties playing in college basketball or even in the Big 12, as BYU reserve Abdullah Ahmed has 54 games to his credit in the NBA G League. But Nnaji is the first to hear his name called during the NBA Draft to then turn around and suit up for a college team. Boyle already has learned to adapt to monumental changes like the advent of the transfer portal, and paying players through NIL/revenue sharing ventures. Yet like most of his coaching colleagues, Boyle reiterated he’s less concerned about adjusting to further changes than he is frustrated at the lack of leadership at the NCAA level. And in terms of eventually adding players to the roster with pro pedigrees, Boyle echoed the sentiment of most of his peers — it’s his job to work within the rules, whatever they are, to put the best product on the floor for Colorado basketball. “A lot of coaches are going to do whatever they’ve got to do to preserve their program and make their program the best. Even if it’s not what’s best for college basketball in general,” Boyle said. “We don’t make a lot of promises when we recruit them. I don’t promise starting positions. I don’t promise minutes. They’ve got to come in and earn that. If I had a chance to sign the kid that Baylor signed, I’m not saying I wouldn’t, but I don’t recruit mid-year transfers. “I’m not saying I would never do it. But if I did, I would be breaking my promise to the guys I recruited. There’s going to be somebody on our team where I said we don’t use the transfer portal, we don’t sign mid-year guys, you don’t have to worry about that if you come to Colorado. The one thing I’m not going to do is lie to the current players that we have in our program. Am I going to recruit a guy next year if we have roster spots available that’s better than the guys we got? That’s my job. That’s all our jobs.” ...read more read less