One and Dones....A Disgrace

With new NBA rules put in effect a couple years back high school basketball players must now sit out a year before applying to play professional basketball. This usually means attending a college basketball program for at least a year. According to the NBA this is a great rule because it forces high school athletes to worker harder in high school so that they are eligible to play for a big time school. They may or may not be right on this but my concern is not how serious they take education but the scholarship money they use for a year and then quit school.

Why does any state, college, or professional organization believe it is okay for a player to use scholarship money with that player having no intention of actually getting a degree? It is absurd for a player to live off of your or my dime for a year before going on to make millions of dollars. People can say it isn’t our dollar they live off of but that of money they bring in through ticket sales but that point is subjective since schools thrive on government grants. It outrages me to think that while I pay for a full four years of college some guy who will make more than I can dream of will get a year free. All the while he has no intention of staying and calling himself an alumnus. Look at Derek Rose, J.J. Hickson, Tyreke Evans and Michael Beasley all who went to college for a year and then left. Out of those the case I know most about is that of J.J. Hickson. He went to NC State for a year, on my dime, then left. He has not done much, if anything to recognize the school as a great institution or promote the school. If anything his actions while at NC State put the basketball program in shambles the year he was here and left Sidney Lowe starting from scratch. So not only are they living off you and me, they rarely bring any kind of worth to the institution they attend.

So what is a solution to this exploitation of the system? It is simple, at least to me. If a player leaves his college early to pursue a professional basketball career then they should be forced to pay back their scholarship, which in most cases includes room and board for the players. They also should be forced to pay back every trip they took with the team. For example if UNC goes to play at UCLA then a player that left early should have to repay the school airfare as well as hotel expenses. This to me is the only fare rule if players want to leave early and colleges want to allow it. However if it was up to me they would be forced to stay till there junior year, just like football athletes do. In my opinion this would develop the players more as men as well as athletes.