Our Thursday Thorns piece this week points out something kind of obvious: in the revenue-generating college sports these days, the athletes are no longer students, really, in the traditional sense. They are professional athletes and basically employees of the school for which they currently toil. The perfect example of this in the upcoming college-sports year is Mississippi guard A.J. Storr, and here is why.

First, this person played for four different high schools before even getting to college: Kankakee (IL); Bishop Gorman (NV); AZ Compass Prep (AZ); and IMG Academy (FL). This is clearly an athlete who wants to be paid to play his sport. These four schools are in different states, so clearly Storr has some enablers here willing to move him around without a “real home” in pursuit of whatever his dreams may be in the world.

Second, Storr started off his college career at St. John’s University in 2022-2023, managing just 1.7 Win Shares in 33 games. He then transferred to Wisconsin for the 2023-2024 season, posting 3.2 WS in 36 games for the Badgers. That got him to jump to the Kansas Jayhawks—for more money, of course—in time for the 2024-2025 season, but that didn’t work out for Storr, as he produced just 0.7 WS in 34 games. Ouch.

So, now? It’s off to the Mississippi Rebels for the 2025-2026 season. How ridiculous is this? That’s eight schools since 2020, according to the reports. What kind of “studying” has this clown even been asked to do at any of these campuses? It’s a question no one is really asking. There’s not a mention of it at all in that profile we linked above, which is a shame that the so-called “journalist” didn’t even pursue that angle. Sad.

Storr is not a student athlete, and while his situation may be strange and unique, it’s clear he’s not good enough to go pro in the United States, or else he would have done so after his solid year in the B1G with Wisconsin. Instead, he flamed out in Kansas and now is trying to rebuild his street cred in Mississippi and the SEC. We’d love to see this kid’s transcript and see what kind of classes he has not been taking. Hmmm.

Generally, most students have to demonstrate academic progress to stay in school, in the pursuit of an eventual degree: you cannot just take lower-division, general-education classes for four years. Eventually, you have to declare a major, and considering the varying degrees of academic reputation and public/private designation for his sequence of both high schools and colleges, we wonder how he was even accepted at SJU.

And we wonder what degree progress he’s made from St. John’s to Wisconsin to Kansas and now to Ole Miss. Credits don’t transfer easily in high school, let alone in college—and again, from a private school to a top public to … whatever KU and Mississippi are, academically. We will never find out, of course, but again, this circles back to the reality that “student athletes” is no longer an appropriate moniker for most players.

Oh, of course, many athletes are great students, but these types like Storr who move around a lot? Nope. Take Cam Ward, too, the quarterback who was drafted No. 1 overall last spring by the NFL’s Tennessee Titans: he played for three different colleges in four years, not as bad as Storr, but still quite ridiculous. What kind of studying did he do at his three campuses? Probably not a lot: student athletes are no more.