Only one SEC player to celebrate senior night at original college

Credit: Jeff Blake-Imagn Images

By Chris Marler

The changes around college sports have been incredibly noticeable year by year. Sometimes though, it’s nice to have a visual to help really illustrate it.

On Tuesday CBS Sports’ Isaac Trotter showed just how drastically different the times we are living, playing, and cheering in. There are over 360 Division I Basketball teams in the country across 31 conferences. There are five High Major Conferences in college basketball consisting of the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big East, and Big 12.

Of the High Major Conferences, there are around 1,000 to 1,200 high-major collegiate basketball players.

This is the last week of the regular season for college basketball. That means it’s Senior Night for a lot of programs. Of the aforementioned 1,200 players across High Major Conferences, just 22 participated in Senior Night at the school they originally went to out of high school. That included just one player from the entire SEC, Mississippi State’s Shawn Jones Jr.

There are only 22 high-major scholarship players who will celebrate Senior Night this week, having played at just one place. Mississippi State’s Shawn Jones Jr. is the only SEC senior to finish where he started.

Dozens of coaching changes and the transfer portal have led to this pic.twitter.com/5GNnAU55qJ

— Isaac Trotter (@Isaac__Trotter) March 3, 2026

Even Lane Kiffin shared his snarky thoughts on how ridiculous that is.

The question that continues to be asked in the aftermath of that bombshell release is how do we fix this? A popular suggestion has been to re-introduce a one time transfer rule allowing players to transfer once without penalty, but forcing them to sit for a period of time after any transfers following the initial one.

Perhaps a better question is not how we fix it, but how is this even enjoyable to watch for the majority of fans and people consuming the product.