AP Photograph/Tony Gutierrez
Kansas’s Shakeel Moore responds to questions throughout a postgame information convention following an NCAA faculty basketball sport towards TCU in Fort Price, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025.
At 3:29 p.m. on Monday, On3 was first to report that Kansas guard Shakeel Moore had entered his identify within the switch portal; by 4:41 p.m., a KU Athletics spokesperson had informed the Journal-World that Moore was eradicating it.
All of the whereas, Moore lacked a significant skill to switch anyplace anyway.
He had already performed 5 full seasons of school basketball, with none eligibility remaining: 25 video games at N.C. State within the 2020-21 season, which doesn’t depend because of the COVID-19 pandemic, however then 34 at Mississippi State in 2021-22, 32 in 2022-23, 33 in 2023-24 and most lately 20 at KU in 2024-25.
There was no identified extant waiver that may have given Moore a sixth yr.
Neither is there one for fellow former KU guard Zeke Mayo, with 4 years of serious motion beneath his belt and recent off the Portsmouth Invitational Event for graduating seniors, who adopted go well with and mentioned he too was coming into the portal on Monday evening.
Positive, Moore struggled with soreness from a damaged foot all by means of his lone season at KU, however he nonetheless performed in 59% of the Jayhawks’ video games — about double the 30% that many faculties cite as a benchmark for a medical waiver — and even got here again for one final sport within the NCAA Event after lacking seven straight, which would definitely damage any case for extra eligibility.
The truth is that Moore and Mayo weren’t the one athletes coming into the portal with no leg to face on. Basketball gamers throughout the nation have been doing it for the reason that early phases of this yr’s spring switch window. Wake Forest heart Efton Reid III — 34 video games at LSU, 25 at Gonzaga, 59 throughout two seasons at Wake — did so on March 31. However the frequency of those entries has fairly apparently intensified within the days main as much as the portal’s closure on Tuesday.
Clemson’s Ian Schieffelin, veteran of 134 video games in 4 years with the Tigers, whose portal entry preceded Moore and Mayo’s on Monday, wrote on X, “Whereas I’m (pursuing) my choices on the skilled degree I’ve been suggested, as a result of pending NCAA circumstances, to enter the portal on the very exterior probability extra eligibility is allowed.”
Mayo used the same phrasing in a submit of his personal: “As a result of pending NCAA guidelines, I’ve been suggested to enter my identify into the switch portal. I’m nonetheless centered on pursuing skilled choices.”
Within the absence of extra concrete data on Moore’s motivations — efforts to achieve these near Moore had been unsuccessful on Monday afternoon — it wouldn’t be a shock if he was planning to take the identical method, not less than for about an hour. It will actually have made monetary sense for him and Mayo, like so a lot of their friends, to take action simply in case, particularly with how a lot cash groups are pouring into faculty basketball payrolls proper now.
Broadly talking, as these portal entries reveal, the state of school athletics is so fluid within the days and weeks main as much as official approval of the Home v. NCAA settlement, and realistically will proceed to be afterwards, that almost anybody may assume they might have a case for extra eligibility.
And why wouldn’t they assume so? School basketball packages had approached the 2023 offseason considering gamers who had transferred greater than as soon as wouldn’t be eligible to play instantly. Then that December, on account of numerous authorized actions, these multi-time transfers had been capable of take the ground instantly. Shock!
A yr later, groups realized halfway by means of the season — once more on account of a court docket determination — that anybody on their rosters who had began at a junior faculty and who would in any other case be performed after the 2024-25 marketing campaign would as an alternative get one other yr of eligibility. That’s now how David Coit was capable of switch to Maryland for a fifth yr and the way KU acquired Melvin Council Jr. from St. Bonaventure.
Besides it wasn’t actually “anybody” who had began at a junior faculty. Sure gamers like Rutgers soccer security Jett Elad, who began his faculty profession in 2019 and redshirted earlier than happening to a JUCO, discovered that as a result of they had been exterior the NCAA’s five-year eligibility clock — in contrast to the likes of Coit, Council or the unique plaintiff who prompted this waiver, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia — the JUCO waiver wouldn’t work for them. Now Elad is in court docket arguing for his personal pursuits, basically primarily based on a “once-in-a-lifetime” $500,000 contract he would miss out on if he can’t play, and if he wins an entire new class of gamers might out of the blue doubtlessly return to motion.
That doesn’t essentially imply a lot for Moore or Mayo or Schieffelin or their ilk. The five-year clock (i.e., pending circumstances like navy or spiritual service, you could have 5 years inside which to finish your faculty athletics profession when you begin it) is completely different than the four-year rule (i.e., however redshirts and the COVID waiver, you may participate in 4 seasons of competitors), and if Elad will get his five-year clock waived it doesn’t imply others will get the four-year eligibility rule waived.
No less than not but. Jon Rothstein of School Hoops Right now wrote on X on Monday, amid the odd string of portal entries, “NCAA members won’t talk about whether or not or not gamers will obtain 5 years of eligibility shifting ahead through laws till after a closing determination on the Home Settlement has been made, per an NCAA official.”
It seems like eligibility goes to increase past 4 years for lots of gamers whether or not the NCAA likes it or not. Wisconsin cornerback Nyzier Fourqurean was capable of persuade a court docket {that a} season he spent enjoying not junior faculty however NCAA Division II soccer in 2021, a yr derailed by the demise of his father, mustn’t depend towards his eligibility, and that by making it depend the NCAA can be depriving him of identify, picture and likeness alternatives. That call is beneath attraction.
Who’s to say different Division II athletes can’t argue that, for financial causes, their years shouldn’t depend towards Division I eligibility? To tread fastidiously down the slippery slope for only a second, who’s to say gamers can’t argue that years spent enjoying at mid-majors illegally prevented them from making high-major cash?
As Fourqurean himself lately mentioned, per BadgerExtra, “it’s very particular to my state of affairs for the 2021 yr when my dad handed and every thing. So I feel it’s very particular to me, so I don’t assume it very a lot advantages all people, however I assume in a method you could possibly assume that it opened up doorways for guys to attempt to cling on to one thing.” There may be certainly lots of clinging on taking place round faculty sports activities.
Kansas guard Zeke Mayo (5) takes a query from reporters alongside facet heart Hunter Dickinson throughout a press convention following the NCAA Event choice present on Sunday, March 16, 2025 at Allen Fieldhouse. The Jayhawks will tackle the Arkansas Razorbacks within the first spherical in Windfall, Rhode Island. Photograph by Nick Krug
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Moore and Mayo’s post-career portal entries are testament to strange state of college sports
Written By Henry Greenstein
