The NCAA Says Babacar Sané Wanted to Be a Professional. College Basketball Now Wants to Pay Him $1.1 Million.

Case Analysis | September 14, 2026

College basketball has arrived at a peculiar place.

Babacar Sané can reportedly earn approximately $1.1 million through St. John’s revenue-sharing arrangement if he plays this season. That compensation is now part of the lawful architecture of Division I athletics.

Yet the NCAA says Sané may not be eligible to receive it—not because he is being paid too much by St. John’s, but because his earlier basketball career demonstrated an “intent to professionalize.”

A New York judge has now temporarily stopped the NCAA from enforcing that determination.

The temptation is to read the September 8 order as another judicial defeat for NCAA eligibility rules. That would be premature. Justice Karina E. Alomar of the Supreme Court of New York, Queens County, issued a temporary restraining order while Sané’s request for a preliminary injunction is litigated. The order does not finally establish that Sané is eligible, invalidate an NCAA bylaw, or decide that former professional basketball players generally have a right to return to college competition. The next major hearing is scheduled for October 1.

But the case still matters.

Sané is attacking one of the increasingly unstable assumptions beneath the NCAA rulebook: that professional basketball and college basketball exist on opposite sides of a meaningful line.

That line used to be central to the NCAA’s identity.

College sports spent decades insisting upon a “clear line of demarcation” between collegiate and professional athletics. Now schools can directly share millions of dollars in revenue with athletes, NIL compensation is ordinary, professional-development leagues feed players into college rosters, international professionals increasingly seek NCAA eligibility, and college basketball itself functions as a lucrative developmental market.

Sané’s case asks what happens when the rulebook still depends on a boundary the business model has spent years erasing.

Sané is a 6-foot-8 forward from Senegal who took an unusual route toward St. John’s.

Before enrolling in college, he played for NBA G League Ignite and other professional teams, competed in the Basketball Africa League and Germany’s Basketball Bundesliga, and in 2024 signed a nonguaranteed Exhibit 10 contract with the Utah Jazz. According to the litigation record summarized by the College Sports Litigation Tracker, the Jazz waived him before training camp; he did not practice or play with the NBA club. The contract reportedly allowed him to obtain an $18,000 bonus connected to remaining in the G League.

That history matters because NCAA eligibility and NCAA reinstatement are not quite the same question.

According to the case materials, the NCAA Eligibility Center determined that Sané had two seasons of collegiate eligibility remaining, but that his prior professional participation caused him to lose eligibility that would have to be restored through the NCAA’s reinstatement process.

St. John’s sought reinstatement.

On August 13, the NCAA denied the request. Sané alleges the denial was based on his “intent to professionalize,” with particular emphasis on the Utah Jazz contract. His lawsuit says the NCAA relied on an internal categorical guideline barring reinstatement for athletes who had signed NBA contracts—a guideline Sané contends does not appear in the NCAA bylaws and was adopted after his reinstatement process had begun.

That distinction is the center of the case.

Sané is not seriously pretending he never played professional basketball. His argument is that the NCAA has a mechanism for restoring eligibility after professional participation, used that mechanism for other similarly situated athletes, and then denied him under a standard he says is neither found in the governing bylaws nor consistently applied.

His complaint asserts claims including breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, denial of fair process, promissory estoppel and declaratory relief. The case is Sané v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, Index No. 726591/2026, pending before Justice Alomar in Queens County Supreme Court.

Sané’s most powerful argument is not philosophical. It is comparative.

His complaint reportedly identifies approximately 90 athletes with professional backgrounds who received NCAA clearance. He specifically points to former G League Ignite players and other professionals whom he says had histories materially similar to—or more extensive than—his own.

That changes the character of the dispute.

If the NCAA had a simple, published rule saying any athlete who signs an NBA contract is permanently barred from college competition, Sané would face a very different lawsuit. Courts may question the wisdom of private-association rules, but they are generally reluctant to rewrite them merely because an individual result seems harsh.

Sané instead argues something more litigation-friendly:

You told everyone there was a process. You applied that process to other professionals. You then created or invoked a categorical limitation that is not in the rulebook and did not explain why I am different.

That is not merely an attack on the substance of the NCAA’s eligibility policy. It is an attack on how the NCAA administered it.

And procedural inconsistency is often more dangerous in court than an unpopular rule applied consistently.

On September 8, Justice Alomar granted Sané a temporary restraining order pending the determination of his motion for a preliminary injunction. The case is scheduled to return for a preliminary-injunction hearing on October 1.

That procedural posture matters enormously.

Under New York law, a temporary restraining order is designed to prevent immediate injury before the court can conduct the fuller preliminary-injunction process. CPLR 6313 permits temporary relief where immediate and irreparable injury would otherwise occur before the hearing. The related preliminary-injunction inquiry asks whether the movant can show a likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable injury, and a balance of equities in his favor.

The purpose is preservation, not final adjudication.

New York courts repeatedly emphasize that provisional injunctions maintain the status quo so that a later judgment does not become meaningless; they are not supposed to determine the parties’ ultimate rights in advance.

So what did Sané win?

For now, he prevented the NCAA’s eligibility determination from immediately ending his ability to participate with St. John’s while the court considers whether stronger interim relief should issue.

That is meaningful.

It is not final.

The September 8 order did not hold that:

That list matters because emergency orders have increasingly become headlines in NCAA litigation.

A TRO answers a short-term question: should the defendant be restrained before the court can meaningfully hear the request for longer provisional relief?

It does not answer the ultimate question: who is legally right?

October 1 is therefore more important than September 8.

The NCAA’s strongest response is institutional.

Private athletic associations need some authority to make eligibility judgments without having every individualized reinstatement decision retried by a judge.

There is old precedent supporting that instinct.

In NCAA v. Lasege, the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed preliminary relief for a player whose reinstatement had been denied after the NCAA concluded that his conduct showed an intent to professionalize. The court criticized the trial judge for substituting judicial judgment for the NCAA’s assessment and concluded that the player had not shown a sufficient likelihood of success to justify injunctive relief.

That case is more than two decades old and arose in a very different college-sports economy. But its underlying warning remains potent:

A court should be cautious about transforming itself into an NCAA eligibility committee.

The NCAA can also make a principled competitive-equity argument. Professional participation is not identical to NIL compensation or school revenue sharing. A player who has spent years developing inside professional systems may have experience, training, and competitive advantages different from a conventional college recruit.

And Sané did more than simply contemplate a professional career. He played professional basketball and signed an NBA contract.

Those are real facts.

The NCAA therefore has a colorable argument that allowing college compensation does not logically require eliminating restrictions based on prior professional participation.

Being paid by a college today does not necessarily mean every form of professional participation yesterday must become irrelevant.

That is the NCAA’s cleanest substantive defense.

The difficulty is that the NCAA’s own system increasingly complicates that defense.

Sané alleges that the NCAA has reinstated numerous athletes with substantial professional histories. The Eligibility Center itself apparently determined that he retains two seasons within the NCAA’s competition framework. And his complaint asserts that the decisive NBA-contract restriction was an internal guideline rather than a clearly stated bylaw.

If those allegations survive factual development, the dispute stops looking like:

Can the NCAA distinguish amateurs from professionals?

It starts looking like:

Can the NCAA create exceptions, reinstate comparable professionals, then draw a new categorical line against one player without grounding that line in the rules governing the process?

That is harder.

Courts often give private associations breathing room to administer their rules.

Breathing room is not the same thing as a blank check.

Sané reportedly stands to receive approximately $1.1 million if he is eligible to play for St. John’s.

That does not itself determine the legality of the NCAA’s decision.

It does, however, expose how dramatically the context has changed.

The old amateurism model assumed a fairly linear progression:

amateur athlete → college athlete → professional athlete.

Modern basketball increasingly looks like a network:

academy → international club → G League → college → NBA → college again, depending on the rules.

At the same time, the House settlement permits participating Division I schools to share revenue directly with athletes, fundamentally changing the economics of the college-athlete relationship. The approved settlement created a revenue-sharing framework tied to a percentage of average shared revenue rather than the older model in which schools largely compensated athletes through scholarships and educational benefits.

That means the word “professional” now does far less analytical work than it once did.

A player can be compensated because of his basketball value by a university while remaining a college athlete.

He can earn NIL money because of his basketball value while remaining a college athlete.

He can receive direct revenue-sharing payments tied to the commercial enterprise of college athletics while remaining a college athlete.

Sané’s lawsuit does not prove that prior professional participation must therefore become irrelevant.

But it does make one thing increasingly difficult to defend:

“He wanted to become a professional” cannot do the same work in 2026 that it did when college sports defined itself by the absence of athlete compensation.

That may be the case’s most important implication.

If schools can pay athletes directly, NCAA eligibility regulation is increasingly less about preserving amateurism and more about deciding which prior career pathways qualify someone to enter the college-sports labor market.

That is a different regulatory project.

It requires coherent answers to questions the old amateurism model largely avoided:

How much professional experience is too much?

Does an NBA contract matter more than playing dozens of games for a professional club abroad?

Does the answer depend on compensation?

League?

Age?

Whether the player practiced?

Whether he reached an NBA roster?

Whether he later genuinely pursued a degree?

And perhaps most importantly: where are those lines actually written?

Sané’s lawsuit is dangerous for the NCAA to the extent it forces those questions into open court.

The organization may ultimately have perfectly defensible answers.

But litigation converts discretion into a record.

Someone has to explain the rule, identify its source, show how it was applied, distinguish prior reinstatement decisions, and justify why the plaintiff falls on one side of the line.

That is much harder than announcing that an athlete showed an “intent to professionalize.”

Sané is not alone.

The College Sports Litigation Tracker already identifies another 2026 case, Warren v. NCAA, challenging restrictions affecting former G League players, alongside a much larger wave of lawsuits challenging NCAA eligibility restrictions on fifth seasons, junior-college participation, waiver denials and transfer rules.

The theories differ.

Some plaintiffs rely heavily on antitrust law. Others use contract theories. Others challenge the NCAA’s procedures or invoke state NIL statutes.

Sané’s case is particularly useful because it demonstrates why contract and fair-process theories may sometimes be more strategically attractive than a sweeping antitrust attack.

He does not necessarily need to prove that every professional-participation restriction unlawfully restrains trade.

A narrower route may be enough:

The NCAA promised a rules-based reinstatement process; Sané came within that process; similarly situated players allegedly received different treatment; and the NCAA allegedly denied him under a standard not contained in the published bylaws.

That theory, if proven, lets a court police the integrity of the NCAA’s own process without redesigning college sports from scratch.

For a judge deciding emergency relief, narrow arguments can sometimes be powerful arguments.

For athletic departments, the immediate lesson is due diligence.

Recruiting a player with G League, NBA, international professional, academy, or other nontraditional experience now carries potentially significant eligibility risk—but also significant competitive upside.

Schools should expect eligibility analysis to become part of roster construction in the same way contractual due diligence is part of professional-team personnel decisions.

For players and agents, professional decisions can have long tails.

An Exhibit 10 contract worth a relatively modest amount at one stage of a player’s career can become enormously consequential if the athlete later has a seven-figure college opportunity.

For the NCAA, consistency becomes more important every time an exception is granted.

Every reinstatement decision can become the comparator in the next lawsuit.

That is the cost of administering an individualized system in an era when athletes can assemble databases of similarly situated players and ask judges a simple question:

Why him and not me?

The next major date is October 1, 2026, when Justice Alomar is scheduled to hear Sané’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

That hearing should tell us considerably more than the TRO.

Sané will need to establish the stronger New York standard for continued provisional relief, including a likelihood of ultimate success, irreparable injury, and equities favoring an injunction.

The NCAA, meanwhile, will have the opportunity to put substance behind the phrase “intent to professionalize.”

Watch particularly for four things:

First, what actual bylaw or reinstatement authority the NCAA identifies as authorizing the NBA-contract distinction.

Second, when the alleged categorical guideline was adopted and whether Sané can establish that the NCAA changed the operative framework while his case was underway.

Third, how the NCAA distinguishes the roughly 90 players Sané says received eligibility despite professional backgrounds.

And fourth, how the court treats irreparable harm. Sané’s potential $1.1 million compensation is eye-catching, but economic loss is ordinarily compensable with money and therefore does not automatically establish irreparable injury. His stronger equitable argument may be that a lost season of athletic competition, team integration, development, and career opportunity cannot simply be recreated by a later damages award.

That issue has repeatedly mattered in modern NCAA injunction litigation.

Whatever happens on October 1, this case is unlikely to settle the entire professional-to-college question.

But it may force the NCAA to articulate something college sports increasingly needs:

A modern explanation for what “professional” means when college basketball itself has become a paid enterprise.

And that may be considerably harder than deciding whether Babacar Sané can play.