Strong words from NU's AD on ESPN: http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...cats-ad-jim-phillips-decries-one-done-culture
Jim Philips: "Shame on us" for one-and-done culture
- Thread starter thewildcat2011
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I get the NCAA's frustration. But they really have no say in the matter. It is all up to the NBA and the Players Union as far as a minimum age restriction. If the collective bargaining process results in no change, what can the NCAA do? Frankly, football is every bit as much a minor league system for the NFL as one-and-done is for the NBA. I don't hear the same outcry for football players, many of whom are no more at their university for an education (viz. the SEC as exhibit 1) than are one-and-done basketball players....................................
They can require that players who enroll in an NCAA institution and accept an athletic grant-in-aid to remain in school for three years before turning pro, just like the systems in football and baseball. Whether that will work or not from a legal or practical perspective obviously is not yet borne out, obviously.
From a business perspective, though, I am a bit cynical:.
No doubt a certain faction of the NCAA's cognoscenti are truly in it for the right reasons. But with the pressure that's on so many universities, public ones whose funding has shrunk in particular, to make ends meet, I have to wonder if a good chunk of these athletic departments are looking at the economics of three or four years of Anthony Davis or D'Angelo Russell or Kevin Durant and saying man, I can pay for a lot of shortfalls that way. Problem is, if some kind of restraint is put in place and holds up, more and more of those caliber of players will no doubt start to avail themselves or European or Asian money like Brandon Jennings or Emmanuel Mudiay did. Both took the risk, to the extent it is one, and have ended up as high picks. (Yes, I'm jumping to conclusions that Mudiay doesn't have La'El Collins situation crop up over the next couple of weeks.)
I'm all for providing a real educational experience to these players. The rules that allow a kid not even to attend spring semester classes because eligibility would only be affected for a sophomore year that never will be are ridiculous. But Dr. Jim and the other leaders on the issue have to be really careful not to fry the golden egg, or at least understand that that could be the end result of playing with the system too radically.
Except the NFL and the NFL Players Association have agreed to a minimum age that means a player must complete his true Junior year. The NCAA has nothing to do with that!!
It's equally disgusting when some tech wiz kid leaves Palo Alto for the Valley.
NJCat,
So what? The NBA could do the same, and, therefore, improve the state of college basketball significantly. Such a move would also benefit the student-athletes, who would be on their way to a better education. If they did not make it in the NBA, they could go back and get a degree in a year or two. There must be some way around this "one and done" mess. (I know, I know, the NBA doesn't give a shit!)
Sure, but nothing stops basketball players from playing professionally overseas. It's a feasible option that doesn't exist in football and that affects only the particular players who would likely be affected by any rule changes. It also alters both the labor market and the options available to the pro league, the pro union and the NCAA.
Do they have no say in the matter, or have they CHOSEN to have no say in the matter until recently? I'd argue that Phillips' statement is the one of the first shots of the NCAA FINALLY inserting itself into this discussion. If I recall correctly, the National Association of Basketball Coaches has been trying to push the NCAA in this direction for a couple years now.
I'd be really surprised if a formal study showed that a simple majority of one-and-dones were productive in their first two years of their rookie contracts. I wonder how many of them have their fourth year renewed as the CBA allows.
If a team doesn't renew its fourth year, then you know the draft pick was bust because the 2014 slot for the 15th player in his fourth year is still below the league average.
Look at SI's mock draft for this year. Owners of teams with the top 15 picks will have to invest a minimum of $3 million and that valuable pick on players from China, Latvia, Croatia and 10 freshmen, two of whom were not full-time starters on Kentucky. I wouldn't want to make those bets on my R&D.
If the NCAA had enough brains to present an ROI study, I'd be really surprised if the NCAA couldn't get the owners to make their argument for them.
I know my argument has little concern for the "student/athletes" but I think most parties involved have little concern for them also.
In general, his comments are just really silly. Every college student is in the minor leagues of every profession. For a time there were the NCAA PSAs: "We're all going pro." The message of those seems to be that, for all the seeming hypocrisy, college sports ultimately serve the good of getting quality kids quality educations and therefore quality careers. But nobody is proposing a year of readiness for journalists or engineers or music performance majors.
The best thing for the student athlete is that, in the power conferences, their college basketball experience is treated as a pre-professional experience. By enrolling in a top conference, the ballplayer clearly has an interest in a professional career. The hypocrisy would be stifling that opportunity. It's a bit of a different story in the smaller conferences, but that's not The Good Doctor's concern.
As an aside, I also think that there should be a way that playing college sports should be counted towards a degree for, say, sports management or physical education. So many of these athletes make their careers in sports that I think it makes sense.
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Do you think the NBA cares one bit about the state of college basketball? They are in one sense competitors.
I think the NBA would LOVE to see a return to the "good, old days" when star players stayed in college for four years, and came out as finished, highly-predictable products. But they have to negotiate the minimum entry age with their unions. And frankly, if they instituted a minimum age of 21 or 22, I would expect more of the star players (guys who would be first-round picks) to go to Europe or the D-League rather than stick around the college game for three or four seasons.
The bottom line is we're talking about a very small number of players who are "one-and-done" in any given season. The college game has far more important problems to deal with: i.e., 40 percent of all D-1 players transfer before their junior years; attendance has fallen steadily for D-1 programs over the last 10 years, and the average D-1 game now draws fewer than 5,000 fans; and television ratings for regular season games have fallen significantly in recent years.
Those are issues the NCAA CAN impact, to some degree. They really have no control over the one-and-done phenomenon.
While they have no say in the NBA's rules and really can't stop kids from going pro after a year, there are lots of things that the NCAA has done to perpetuate the one and done scenario:
1. Certain schools don't even try to educate their players. Some do, and some players take a year of education seriously, but others don't and there really isn't a penalty. Uconn did lose a year of postseason eligibility, and went out and won the NCAA tourney the next year. There's no incentive to graduate anyone.
2. Coaches change jobs more often than they change their pants. Why should a player stick around instead of going and getting the big pay day when the coaching staff which recruited him to go to the school is ready to leave to get the pay day?
3. The NCAA minimum standard is a joke. I think it was a 700 on the SAT when it was based on a 1600. The minimum score you can get on the SAT at the time was 400. As such, many kids are in college that truly have no business being there from an academic standpoint. People will justify it saying that if you take a kid that can barely read and get him to a high school level, you've done him a service. I think that's garbage. Some people don't start with enough of a background to possibly get a degree. Why bother staying in school if you're not smart enough to earn a degree?
Disclaimer: there are lots of intelligent people that leave school early for the NBA or have even gone to the NBA out of high school.
If the NCAA where to fix these things, then I see less players going to the NBA after 1 year.
I can tell you that nothing has done more to impact the approach of schools toward academic progress than the institution of the NCAA's APR (Academic Progress Report) rules. After Idaho State was put on APR sanctions for football a few years ago (post-season ineligibility, loss of scholarships and practice time), the school increased its minimum academic standards for recruits well above NCAA and Big Sky Conference requirements. The result has been the football team's graduation rate has gone up substantially in recent years. APR has also gotten the attention of the rest of the Big Sky Conference schools, some of whom have been sanctioned as well; some were just on the brink of sanctions. The result is that schools are taking fewer JC and D-1 transfers (and the ones they are taking are held to higher entrance standards), and they are scrutinizing high school recruits much more closely.
Of course, APR rates are unaffected by "one-and-done" kids -- schools do not lose APR points when a player leaves early to go pro. But again, there are very few true "one-and-dones" in any given year. And the fact that APR rules apply to all of the other players has made it imperative that schools take academic progress seriously. UCONN found that out the hard way when they were declared ineligible for the NCAA tournament because of poor APR performance.
Agreed. Pointing to "one and done play" as the problem is overly simplistic and not really the problem. In the 60 picks in the 2014 NBA Draft, only 8 college Freshmen were selected. There are roughly 4,381 Division 1 basketball players on scholarship.
Really? Uconn learned it's lesson? It got suspended from post season play for a year and turned around and won the national title. What did that teach anyone? The punishment was the NCAA pretending to come down on someone. Calhoun investigated for recruiting violations in 2009. He wins the national title in 2010-2011. He gets suspended in 2011 for more violations. Then the team has to sit from the tourney in 2012-13. Then they win the title in 2013-14. The only lesson is that the punishment is not a deterrent.
The APR standard and NCAA discipline might be working at places like Idaho or the Big Sky. Those places aren't recruiting top 25 recruits in the country and not even their biggest fan thinks they're going to win the National Title. What needs to happen is to start fining, suspending without pay, and ruining the careers of coaches and administrators that aren't following the rules in addition to raising the minimum academic requirement.
Breaking recruiting or "extra benefit" rules is a different issue than requiring students to maintain academic eligibility. APR is a mathematical formula that is difficult to game. Either your players stay academically eligible, or you lose points. Lose enough points, and you're facing sanctions. (Now, are there schools -- read North Carolina -- who game the actual academics of athletes? Absolutely. Again, a totally different issue -- one of integrity. Bottom line: you will always have cheaters who try to get around whatever system you create to try to enforce academic integrity.)
If Tech whiz does not succeed, he can go back to school where he can take all the same colleges, mature, refine his skills and try again. Not possible with NBA
False. A failed NBA player can go back to college, mature, gain skills, and try again... at life.
Not if the punishment is an actual deterrent to the crime. Yes, I understand that people do commit capital crimes even if the death penalty should be seen as the ultimate deterrent. So yes, someone is always going to cheat, but that number would be a whole lot smaller if the coaches know that they won't be able to get another job if they do cheat. What if Jim Calhoun had to sit the entire year, unpaid, and couldn't get another NCAA job while his team was ineligible due to their unacceptable APR? Don't you think that he would've recruited kids that could/would graduate?
I think the NCAA's show-cause penalty has done a lot to keep coaches scared. Look what happened to Bruce Pearl. He had to take 3 years off and was doing marketing at a grocery store. Kelvin Sampson worked as an NBA assistant for 6 years before getting another shot as a NCAA head coach.
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