College basketball is getting older.
In 2019, the average age of a Sweet 16 starter in the men’s tournament was 20.8.
In 2021, it rose to 21.2.
In 2025, the average age was 21.6 years.
The starting five players on Auburn this year averaged 23.2 years old, which is older than the starting lineups of five NBA teams this season and two years older than the Washington Wizards’ starting lineup, which came in at 21.2 years old.
I didn’t get to college until I was 23 years old. No teacher or guidance counselor in my high school, nor any of my parents, ever spoke the word “college” to me, so I never took the SAT and never set foot in the guidance office.
Never even contemplated the possibility of college.
Instead, I graduated and was immediately on my own, absent any parental safety net, for the rest of my life.
I spent five years in a series of adventures and misadventures that included homelessness, jail, and a trial for a crime I didn’t commit. I also shared a room with a goat for about a year. I was exceptionally poor, working endless hours, and surprisingly happy much of the time.
Once I was found not guilty in a court of law, I began my collegiate journey, first at Manchester Community College and later at Trinity College and St. Joseph’s University.
Though I wish I had been able to attend college directly out of high school, I am also quite certain that I managed to extract more from my education—even while managing McDonald’s restaurants fulltime, launching a DJ business, and working on campus in the writing center—than I would have at age 18.
The fact that these college athletes are getting older is not a bad thing. Age, life experience, and wisdom make a big difference in one’s approach to higher education. Some 18-year-olds are quite ready for the experience, but I suspect that many are not.
A little more life under their belt can make all the difference.
I suspect that if given a chance, I would have been ready at 18, but I was even more prepared at 23. I missed out on many of the things that make college life joyous and unforgettable, and I know I would have made friends who would last a lifetime, but I stepped onto campus as a man on a mission.
After being homeless, jailed, tried for a crime I did not commit, and forced to share a room with a farm animal, nothing seemed hard anymore. Working a full-time job and launching a business while also going to school full-time — working in student government, writing for the college newspaper, serving as President of the National Honor Society, and tutoring in the writing center — seems impossible to me today, but back then, I was so happy, grateful, and joyous to be learning on a college campus that nothing could have stood in my way.
With so much struggle and trauma behind me, I was unstoppable.
I suspect that at least a few of Auburn’s old men understood this, too. The team made it to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament this year, but it lost to the eventual champion Florida Gators in a close game after one of its stars was limited by injury.
Wisdom and experience can really make a difference.
