So, Tre White's back, huh?

The Kansas men's basketball program on Friday announced that former, now current, KU forward Tre White would be returning for the 2026-27 college basketball season, so long as the temporary restraining order (TRO) making him eligible and what is sure to be a continued fight in the courts allows him to remain on the Kansas roster.

Confused yet?

They say that good ledes in journalism are supposed to be tight, clear and to the point. But there's no real concise way to explain what's happening with White and a whole host of other college athletes who are seeking a fifth year of eligibility before it's too late.

In short, White was part of a group of 90 members of the high school class of 2022 that, on Thursday, received a preliminary injunction from judge Kara Krothe in Monroe (Indiana) County Circuit Court, which allowed the group of 90 athletes immediate eligibility for the 2026-27 season.

Before we move on, yes, we're talking about the same Tre White you know and are probably thinking about.

He was the Jayhawks' second leading scorer last season, who, at the time, exhausted his eligibility and then went on to be one of the top performers in the NBA's summer league season as he pursued a pro career.

That summer showing by the former Jayhawk certainly projected more of a move forward than a jump back. But here we are, with KU celebrating his return, fans of the sport scratching their heads and trying to decide if they like the new rules or not and the NCAA doing NCAA things in court.

In a Friday statement, KU coach Bill Self said White is eligible to come to campus and practice, "and hopefully play in games."

"He’s had a great offseason and performed well with the (Miami) Heat and had a very successful summer league," Self added in the statement. "When the opportunity presented itself to go back to college, he wanted to come back to KU, and we welcomed that."

The shot at even entertaining the idea of White returning to Lawrence came when the NCAA shifted its eligibility model from the old way to a 5-in-5 system that grants athletes a fifth year and essentially eliminates redshirts.

In the statement released Friday, Self also said that White pursued the idea of coming back to Kansas all on his own, which, the KU coach pointed out, "shows he wants to be here."

Hard to blame him.

Life as a Kansas basketball player has always been a good gig. But it's become even better in recent years — at least in a more financially lucrative sense — when the NCAA opened the door to name, image and likeness compensation and eventually revenue sharing paid directly by the schools to their athletes.

So, yeah. It makes sense for White and others to want to return to places like Kansas and LSU and Texas and Michigan and a bunch of other Power 4 schools, because they get the opportunity to do what they love at a place they're adored while cashing some pretty sweet checks in the process.

Big picture, this is probably good for college athletics — it may smooth out some of the insane player movement and, it time, it should take a whole bunch of lawsuits and waiver requests out of the college ranks — and it's certainly good for the athletes who want to stay in school and play college sports for five years or need that extra year to offset an injury or some other setback.

But, as with just about every significant change — no matter the industry — the immediate picture is far less clear and the athletes like White, who are stuck in the middle of this transition, are moving forward with the hope of benefiting from the new way without causing too much chaos.

Good luck.

Good or bad, like it or hate it, that just doesn't seem to be the way it works with these sorts of things.

So for as much as this is a big boost to KU's chances on the court this season, it certainly doesn't do anything to calm the waters of what has become of college sports.

Getting back to White's return, there's no doubt that adding him to the Kansas roster makes the Jayhawks better. We've seen what he can do. We know he's capable of playing 30+ minutes per night if needed. And we also know that he brings a lot of traits and versatility to a lineup that had as many questions as known commodities.

He's a scorer, a defender, a competitor and a fighter. And he brings a ton of college basketball experience and likely some leadership qualities to a roster that is almost entirely new to KU and each other.

Clearly, White has a chance to be the steadying force on this KU roster and in the locker room, and he offers much more in that way than returners Kohl Rosario and Paul Mbiya.

White, who averaged 14 points and 7 rebounds per game for the Jayhawks last season, has played nearly 3 times as many college basketball games himself as Rosario and Mbiya combined. And more than eight times the minutes.

So, yeah, Self's team got better today. There's no questioning that. The question that remains is whether they'll still be better the next day or the day after that or 99 days down the road.

No one knows the answer to that one yet. But the Jayhawks are ready if he is.

— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com