The funniest part of any 2026-27 college basketball preview to date was produced by CBS’s (excellent) Isaac Trotter. It wasn’t a joke. It was a simple accounting of reality — specifically, the reality of LSU’s current men’s basketball roster — presented identically to every other team.
But a tweet that quoted it made me spit out my Diet Coke:
This is the defining image of the 2026 college hoops offseason. “If eligible.” This is what it’s really all about.
Of course Wade’s LSU is just the most extreme example of Our Game’s current malady. There are lots of teams awaiting many forms of legal clarity on all kinds of variously impactful players. Similar, albeit less drastic, caveats abound. This made the latter half of the offseason — which began, at least in these parts, with so much enjoyment and optimism — dispiriting.
College basketball fans are hardly strangers to sudden systemic changes. The past decade has been a crash course in relearning everything about how the product is made, for everyone involved. It turned coaches into full-time contract lawyers and fundraisers. It turned student-athletes into clinical pros. It forced fans to evolve their emotional attachment styles: form your bonds fast or forget it altogether. It feels like Nigel Pack got $300,000 to transfer to Miami several decades ago. Remember the scandal? Gasp! How quaint. Try being jaded about a $300,000 transfer now.
And yet the past couple of months have somehow still been different and much worse, even from all that. For the first time ever, we — even those of us who liked the new landscape, who thought it was high time the players got to share in both career agency and cash — have had to get our heads around rosters we thought settled months ago actually not being the rosters after all. All of the analysis you did in the spring, the fun portal opinions you have formed, the calculations and compromises you made with yourself, the time spent looking at your own team and your league competition and exhibition trips and YouTube clips, the statistical models you rely on to stress-test your impressions, suddenly, in August, all of it felt pointless.
It wasn’t, obviously. But it felt that way. A judge made one of a dozen interrelated legal decisions, and then nobody knew anything, and so what’s the point of getting all precious about the in-depth previews you love to write every fall? Just tell me who’s eligible when the season starts. This was a reasonable way to approach it. (Even in podcasts, there have been times when both Tate and I have defaulted to this mode.)
Without being too dramatic about it, for someone who writes about college basketball — and about how and why college basketball makes us feel things — this is how an existential crisis takes hold.
Beyond being confused and annoyed and vaguely bummed out, Buzzer’s plan was to wait it out. There was no point writing about each court case, some of which have already been overturned (or stayed) in multiple directions since. Perhaps, one day soon, all of the legal limbo will get instantly solved! Poof! Total knowledge, no caveats! Maybe late August? Maybe in September? Maybe tomorrow we’ll get the One Decision To End Them All, we’ll know exactly who will participate in the 2026-27 season and for which teams, and that will be that, and then we can get back to writing about basketball. Easy!
Since August, as I’ve rolled my eyes at every ridiculous new injunction — Trey Kaufman-Renn, man, what are we even doing — I’ve also hemmed and hawed about when to begin the annual preview series, always thinking it made sense to wait just a little bit longer. It was like praying for a niche rapture. Roster Epiphany Day. Watch, therefore, you do not know when when the lord of the house is coming. All that.
It was futile. We’re still waiting.
Now, it’s time. What else are we going to do? Not preview 2026-27? Sit around until every shred of legal uncertainty is tidily resolved? That’s unthinkable; it’s also no fun. So, beginning this week, through the start of the season on Nov. 2, Buzzer will be rolling out our annual Better Know a Conference series. As usual, these will be a combination of roster analysis, statistical findings, and broader narratives — the story of each team on the precipice of another campaign. As ever, we’ll have one for all five of the power leagues, plus a catch-all post for the rest of Division I.
Then we’ll tip off our fourth season of coverage at the Internet’s premier independent college hoops newsletter. Thank God the basketball is almost back.
The season will, as ever, include tons of excited early-season noncon coverage, the usual essays, constantly active chats, on-site tournament coverage, and of course another Bubble Watch campaign — this time involving whatever the bubble looks like for a 76-team tournament, which is going to make the whole thing even weirder and more unwieldy and require us to unlock yet another level of unrepentant sicko-ness. New depths will be plunged. Honestly can’t wait.
I try to say this often without being annoying about it, but this newsletter — even in the moments of personal self-doubt or deep frustration with the sport at large — has always been a joy. That joy comes from you, the readers. Buzzer’s paid subscribers have made this thing go from the beginning, and that support has created the most gratifying, tight-knit audience relationship I’ve ever had the pleasure to share. The fact that so many people continue to ride with us every year means everything to me, and the fact that so many thousands of you even care enough to receive this in your inbox is incredible and surreal.
Which, in part, is why I’ve decided to use this preseason to roll out the newsletter’s first ever sale: The more the merrier, after all. The way I see it, this is perfect time for even more folks to get in on the fun for a full year at a 25% discount — hopefully, a nudge for the many hundreds of people who show up here and there during the season to take the plunge and invest in this community full-time.
Disclosure: I have no idea whether this will be a popular thing, or whether we’ll ever do it again. I haven’t commissioned a marketing analysis or created a pitch deck here. But with the season fast approaching, and coming off the weirdest offseason ever, and with what feels like a new era of both college hoops and Bubble Watch upon us, I figured now is the right time to see how it goes.
The sale is live now. It expires Nov. 2. You can get your discounted annual subscription AT THIS SPECIAL SIGN UP LINK RIGHT HERE (which was also included toward the top of the post above).
Sign up. Send the link to your hoops-obsessed friends, family, in-laws, whatever. Spread the word. Join us.
Most of all, let’s double back down. This little corner of the Internet — a place where we trade in entirely human generated words about a relatively niche (but more popular than ever!) American collegiate sport — was launched as a commitment to our shared love of a somewhat strange thing. It was a bet that this type of thing should and could exist. The object of our shared affection has changed, gotten stranger. It will continue to, at least in the short term. But no matter odd this summer felt — and for all the uncertainty that will continue to loom over the next few weeks — I remain as excited about start of the 2026-27 season as I ever have about any. I can’t not be excited about the basketball. I can’t not be excited to talk and write about it for another year. I can’t wait to share that love, again, with all of you.
Thanks for being here. Look out for the previews. Let’s get it.
Eamonn
Would the discount apply to current monthly members who want to switch to an annual subscription?
I really appreciate your college hoops insight. As a subscriber from the beginning of your venture here, my hope is you produce more content this season than the past couple.