Let’s say you’re a really good basketball player — so good that you’re convinced you’ll be a pro. Your coaches agree. Your parents agree. Scouts agree.
And let’s say you’re not interested in going to college. You don’t love English, or math, or engineering, or any other course work. You don’t consider a scholarship sufficient compensation. You don’t like that fact that college coaches and administrators make so much money while you don’t.
But you go to college anyway, because the current system says that playing one year of college is a better way to achieve your NBA goal than going overseas. What motivation do you have to go to class? To abide by NCAA rules with which you disagree? To protect those around you by following the musty mandates of “amateurism?”
One-and-dones aren’t the only problem facing college basketball. Far from it. Still, so much of the sport’s unsavoriness stems from that NBA rule requiring a player to be at least one year removed from high school before he can enter the league.
The Commission on College Basketball is right to prioritize that issue, but it doesn’t have the power to force the NBA to change its collective bargaining agreement. Urging the league to change the one-and-done rule is simply that — urging. The NBA ultimately can do what it wants.
The NCAA should, too.
While summarizing the committee’s 60-page report in a news conference in Indianapolis on Wednesday, chairman Condoleezza Rice said the goal is “to strengthen the collegiate model — not to move toward one that brings aspects of professionalism into the game.”
The best way to do that would be to rid college basketball of players who have no interest in academia. This would reduce the NCAA’s star power, but that’s a sacrifice the organization has to be willing to make if it is serious about changing the game.
Since the NBA adopted the so-called one-and-done rule in 2006, players have spoken out about its inherent unfairness. Cave Spring graduate and current Philadelphia 76ers guard J.J. Redick spoke for many last month when he told Business Insider: “If you’re good enough to play [right out of high school], then you should be in the NBA.”
Rice said committee members considered the “baseball rule” that requires two or three years of college if prospects don’t go directly into the pros out of high school, but they decided not to recommend it. Why? Many college basketball coaches support that model, but implementation is tough without the NBA’s cooperation. While Major League Baseball’s rules prevent freshmen at four-year schools from being drafted, nothing stops an NBA team from doing it under the current system.
The NCAA ideal needs to look more like Virginia and less like Kentucky and Duke. If the NBA wants to force top players into a one-year finishing school, the league should have to finance that itself rather than using college basketball as its farm system.
Rice authoritatively told The Associated Press: "One-and-done has to go one way or another.” She said if the NBA doesn’t change its rule, the commission will look into other options, such as making freshmen ineligible or locking a scholarship for three or four years if the recipient leaves a program after one year.
The latter option is a scary one for college coaches. Imagine recruiting a player you assume is going to stay for three years, then seeing him leave for the draft — or any other reason – after his freshman year. Now you’re without that scholarship for two or three more seasons.
But you know what? Substantive change often is uncomfortable. Maybe some of these coaches need a little fear instilled in them. Maybe they need to do their due diligence on players who come into their programs or risk seeing their rosters get hamstrung.
More than anything, they would be forced to find young men who actually wanted to go to college. Shouldn’t that be the goal of college sports in the first place?