Florida basketball's Todd Golden explains why NCAA’s roster displacement argument falls short

Florida basketball coach Todd Golden spoke out against the NCAA, criticizing the organization’s argument against granting additional eligibility to athletes from the 2022 class.

Golden was asked on Friday, Oct. 9, how he would handle playing younger players now that the five-for-five rule has been instituted.

“It doesn’t impact how I feel about guys playing on this particular team, but it definitely impacts what we do moving forward,” Golden said. “The NCAA’s argument that allowing ’22s enrolled in school to play, that it would disrupt all these student-athletes, and that guys and gals would be getting cut off teams, it’s just BS. It’s not true.”

Golden’s comments come after Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen won a court hearing against the NCAA, which secured a temporary injunction that allows him to play a fifth year. Part of the NCAA’s argument for denying the class of 2022 an extra year was roster overflow and displacing younger players for the upcoming season.

Golden disputed that logic, arguing the impact would happen in the future, not this year.

“There are no examples of that, and the reality which people are now starting to realize, the displacement is going to happen next year,” Golden said. “All these guys in college right now are going to have another year next year. So do you think it’s going to affect the freshmen from the ’26 high school class, which they’re arguing, or the ’27 class?

Golden pointed to Villanova coach Kevin Willard’s comment about choosing to not recruit high school freshmen this year due to five-for-five as an example.

“I’d much rather one of my players come back than bring in a high school kid,” said Willard at Big East Media Day. “I think moving forward, this kind of reminds me of what happened with COVID. A lot of high school kids, a lot of high school players, got penalized, and it wasn’t their fault. So I think after a year or two, this system will flush out and I think coaches will go back to recruiting high school players.”

Golden agreed with Willard’s analysis of the future of recruiting, as opposed to the NCAA’s roster landscape.

“Every single student-athlete in college now will be able to play next year,” Golden said. “So it’s a misguided argument. It’s not factually accurate.”

A string of rulings has gone in the NCAA’s favor; however, those rulings mostly concern class-action lawsuits rather than individual cases like Aberdeen.

“They haven’t been winning appeals, but they’ve been getting stay orders,” Golden said. “Big difference.

“The NCAA is arguing all these other cases blindly.”

The NCAA recently filed an appeal against Aberdeen this week. Golden criticized the NCAA’s approach to evaluating individual eligibility cases, because it failed to account for the circumstances of athletes like Aberdeen.

“They’re not saying, ‘Well, this kid is at 80% progress toward a degree, which is what we expect for a fifth-year senior. He was in the portal, transfer properly, OK,” Golden said. “The only reason why they don’t want to play is that they don’t think ’22s should be able to play. It’s an absurdity.

“He has the best factual case, so we feel very comfortable where we’re at. His legal team did a really wonderful job of explaining that, and I think the NCAA is going to have a really hard time explaining why they think he shouldn’t play basketball this year.”

Reach Florida Gators writer Andrew Abadie at AAbadie@usatodayco.com or on X (formerly Twitter) at @AndrewAbadie. You can also find him on Facebook at Andrew Abadie Sports Reporter or on Instagram @andrewabadie_sports.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida basketball’s Todd Golden explains why NCAA’s roster displacement argument falls short