Jay Bilas blasts the NCAA after their ruling on Tez Walker

ESPN’s Jay Bilas has been highly critical of the NCAA throughout much of his broadcasting career with the network. While his main focus is commentating on college basketball, Bilas recently heard of the NCAA’s ruling on North Carolina wide receiver Tez Walker and as you might imagine, he wasn’t happy about it at all.

Bilas blasted the NCAA in a video he released on Twitter on Friday afternoon.

Check it out below.

My thoughts on the situation surrounding @UNCFootball WR Tez Walker. This decision by the NCAA is just shameful. pic.twitter.com/mgh3L2Traj

— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) September 8, 2023

“The NCAA’s decision in the Tez Walker case is senseless, it’s wrong, and frankly, shameful. Tez Walker is a football player at the University of North Carolina. He started his career at North Carolina Central, when Central cancelled their season due to Covid. He transferred to Kent State, where he played two seasons. He lost his head coach and his offensive coordinator. And he decided for mental health reasons and to be closer to a family member who’s ill, to transfer to the University of North Carolina,” Bilas said in the video.

“After transferring, he was notified by the NCAA that they changed their transfer policy. Both North Carolina Central and Kent State supported his transfer waiver and yet the NCAA has still denied it. It is wrong. And when the NCAA says student athlete welfare, that’s pretty far down the list, behind money and behind what they think is their reputation. And it’s not a question of trying to establish credibility because the NCAA has none in this area,” Bilas continued.

“And new NCAA president Charlie Baker, instead of petitioning Congress for an antitrust exemption and to try to get a federal law to pre-empt all the state NIL laws, what he should do is step in here and make Tez Walker immediately eligible. Especially when you have all these two-time transfers. Some who have transferred three and four times who have played six years. This makes no sense and it’s wrong. Tez Walker should be eligible right away and I wouldn’t blame him and his lawyers if they stepped into federal court tomorrow and filed suit against the NCAA. That’s how wrong this decision is,” Bilas said.

Pat McAfee also ripped the NCAA for the Tez Walker ruling

On Thursday, the NCAA officially ruled against Walker’s eligibility case, denying him a transfer waiver for 2023. That was maddening to the Tar Heels, and to many around the college football world, and McAfee made sure to make his feelings known during The Pat McAfee Show on Friday.

“Speaking of going bananas, Mack Brown is not happy with the NCAA. … The NCAA is an interesting situation. The NCAA has less power than it’s ever had, in its entire being. Now it used to be the heavy hand in every conversation. Remember, they would use the world that they made up, ‘Amateurism,’ as the reason for why common sense things couldn’t happen for players, and the NCAA divisions. So now that NIL has taken place, it kind of kicks them out, even though they’re digging back in to the files, to find when NIL wasn’t legal, did anybody do any NIL stuff, we will still punish them,” started McAfee. “With what they’re doing in North Carolina, these fans are chanting it, ‘Free Tez Walker,’ for a reason. This is the dumbest thing that the NCAA has maybe ever done.

“I’m not saying it’s the worst thing they’ve ever done, but maybe it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever done.”

On3’s Steve Samra also contributed to this article.