Nobody has college basketball completely figured out right now. The sport has spent the past several years undergoing one fundamental change after another. Players can profit from their name, image and likeness. READ MORE: TCU's Desmond Bane Calls For New Limit on College Basketball Spending Schools can directly share revenue with athletes. Third-party NIL remains another piece of the financial puzzle, and coaches are building rosters in an environment that hardly resembles the one they operated in five years ago. Confusing? Absolutely. Frustrating? Depending on who you ask. But until college basketball settles into whatever its new normal becomes, programs are going to have to get creative. TCU deserves some credit for doing exactly that. The Horned Frogs named Desmond Bane their first Chief Basketball Officer in June, creating a volunteer position for one of the best players in program history while he continues his NBA career with the Orlando Magic. It was unconventional then. Less than two months later, it's beginning to look pretty smart.
Bane recently explained to Front Office Sports that his involvement has extended well beyond putting a recognizable former Horned Frog's name on TCU's staff directory. He's talked to players about money management, offered coaches insight into NBA player-development trends, helped with locker-room culture and recently hosted the Horned Frogs at his Texas home for team bonding. That's a Chief Basketball Officer actually doing some chief-basketball-officering. And Bane's thoughts on NIL might be the best example yet of why his perspective could matter. "I think NIL's a great thing," Bane told Front Office Sports. "I think players deserve to get paid." But he also believes college basketball needs more structure, suggesting some form of broader spending limit could give donors and coaches a clearer understanding of their financial parameters. Whether Bane's preferred solution is ever feasible isn't really the point. He's thinking about the problem from a position very few people can. Bane played four seasons at TCU from 2016-20, before college athletes could profit from NIL under today's system. He then entered an NBA environment governed by considerably clearer financial rules. Now he's back around college basketball as its economic model is being rebuilt. That's useful perspective. TCU isn't going to solve college basketball's problems by giving Bane a title. It doesn't need him to. The Horned Frogs have simply recognized that navigating an uncertain era requires more than doing things the way they've always been done. Find creative solutions. Surround your players with good people. And when one of those people happens to be a TCU graduate, six-year NBA veteran and one of the best basketball players your school has ever produced? Find him a chair at the table. Bane told Front Office Sports that he and Jamie Dixon had been "in lockstep" about a role like this for roughly two years. READ MORE: Adam Vinatieri Slams Bill Belichick Ahead of TCU Showdown Now we're beginning to see what TCU envisioned. Maybe Chief Basketball Officer sounds unconventional. College basketball is pretty unconventional these days, too. That's precisely why it might work.