Northwestern AD on 1-and-done rule: Shame on us...we've allowed NBA to dictate rules

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BleedGopher

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per ESPN:

"Frankly speaking," Phillips said, "shame on us. We've allowed the National Basketball Association to dictate what our rules are, or influence what our rules are at the collegiate level."

Phillips said NBA executives "look at us as the minor leagues."

"Nobody feels great about kids going to school for a semester and then leaving," he said. "That's crazy. It's absurd. So we've got to fix it.

"Why have we accepted that? Why have we just allowed that to happen without any pushback?"

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...cats-ad-jim-phillips-decries-one-done-culture

Go Gophers!!
 

He said he hopes for legislative change to occur, as a result, in January 2016 at the next NCAA convention.

"What do we want the experience to be?" Phillips said. "Personally speaking, I don't want to be the minor leagues. I cringe that we're considered and that people look at us that way.

"We've allowed it to get to this position. So now, we are at a very important point for us to make some hard but decisive decisions about what the future of college athletics is going to be."
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Time to do something.
 

The solution is to get rid of the college requirement for the NBA entirely. It's absurd. We're perfectly okay with baseball taking in players out of high school, but somehow it's a HUGE problem for basketball. Doing what MLB does - you can go straight to the pros or go to college, but in college you have to spend 2/3 years - would be a decent enough way of doing things.

The fears that underpin this rule are unfounded, at least from the players' perspective. Study after study has shown that players make *more* money if they come in from high school - they're not being fed to the wolves, they're getting an extra contract negotiation period during their prime. The players don't benefit from the current arrangement and neither do the fans. The only beneficiaries are the NBA owners, who get an extra year of player development for free at the expense of the college tuition payer, ticket buyer, and even taxpayer in the case of publicly funded universities.

It would also be slightly less egregiously unfair if the players were treated as employees of the university whilst being deprived of a year of professional income, but hey, that's just crazy talk.
 

BBQ Platypus said:
The solution is to get rid of the college requirement for basketball entirely. It's absurd. We're perfectly okay with baseball taking in players out of high school, but somehow it's a HUGE problem for basketball. Doing what MLB does - you can go straight to the pros or go to college, but in college you have to spend 2/3 years - would be a decent enough start.

The fears that underpin this rule are unfounded, at least from the players' perspective. Study after study has shown that players make *more* money if they come in from high school - they're not being fed to the wolves, they're getting an extra contract negotiation period during their prime. The players don't benefit from the current arrangement and neither do the fans. The only beneficiaries are the NBA owners, who get an extra year of player development for free at the expense of the college tuition payer, ticket buyer, and even taxpayer in the case of publicly funded universities.

It would also be slightly less egregiously unfair if the players were treated as employees of the university, but hey, that's just crazy talk.
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Yes they are, and the NBA commissioner, who serves at the pleasure of the owners, enforces the rule that makes players ineligible until 1 year out of high school. So if they owners benefit by having a free minor league development system, why would they ever change that? If colleges insist on a minimum 2-year commitment, let's say, those one-and-done players would simply play overseas or in the NBADL for a year. Things aren't going to change, no matter how much the colleges want it to, because the NBA holds all the cards.
 

Baseball has a thorough and professionally-funded minor league system, which is why there is absolutely no problem with the MLB drafting kids right out of high school. Hockey is (in a diminished fashion) the same way. The pro sports that do not have an articulated minor league system should have to either create one or deal with rules that do not allow immature young adults to exploit a broken rule. It is irresponsible and unhealthy for the sport at both levels (using basketball as an example) to allow things to keep going like they have been. If you don't have a responsible minor league system for the NBA, it should be two, or perhaps three, -and-done. If they can get the D-League up to a level where the kids can learn their craft while working their way up the ranks, then by all means they should have that as an option directly out of high school.
 


WindyCityGopher said:
Yes they are, and the NBA commissioner, who serves at the pleasure of the owners, enforces the rule that makes players ineligible until 1 year out of high school. So if they owners benefit by having a free minor league development system, why would they ever change that? If colleges insist on a minimum 2-year commitment, let's say, those one-and-done players would simply play overseas or in the NBADL for a year. Things aren't going to change, no matter how much the colleges want it to, because the NBA holds all the cards.
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Then let the players play overseas how many people have actually seen Mudiay play? as a result Mudiay is likely to slip behind 2 players who he was rated higher than (247 composite) at then end of his recruiting class. It's also possible he slips farther. I doubt that playing overseas is a good option for many 5 star players and we see some if not most stay in school. Plus if we see a scattering of 5 star players overseas every year then NBA teams will have to spend more on scouting and comparing players becomes much harder as they can't judge the talent that each player is playing against.

As for BBQ platypus the NBA is the one to have the 1 year away from HS requirement. The colleges have nothing to do with this and the NBA has all the advantages given. I don't think the NBA will change this. As a result Schools have to make Scholarships a 2 year minimum agreement where the school gives them a scholarship for 2 years and can't get rid of them so long as the player is in good standing. If however the player leaves the player my be forced to return the scholarship money cost of gear food travel and board... not sure that'd hold up in court
 


At the end of the day, both entities should stop worrying about what the other does. The NBA is going to do what it thinks is best for the NBA. Let them. The NCAA should do what is best for college sports and athletes. The NCAA can't control what the NBA wants to do with its players, and should not be handcuffed by what the NBA decides.
 

How does the mlb and collegiate baseball enforce the 3 years of college rule? You can only be drafted at those two increments? I don't see the NBA changing their one year removed rule and I don't know how the NCAA could enforce someone staying in college after one year
 



The only recourse I see for the NCAA is making the freshmen ineligible.

Best case scenario would be for the NBA to adopt the rules of MLB.....don't see that happening though.

I want to see college basketball being played by actual college students. If that means we lose a few of the top tier players,..so be it.

It would be nice to have the players for at least three years. A chance to build a team and watch them grow.
 

station19 said:
The only recourse I see for the NCAA is making the freshmen ineligible. Best case scenario would be for the NBA to adopt the rules of MLB.....don't see that happening though. I want to see college basketball being played by actual college students. If that means we lose a few of the top tier players,..so be it. It would be nice to have the players for at least three years. A chance to build a team and watch them grow.
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I think you're right about freshman ineligibility. The NCAA can go to the NBA and say change it you are ruining our game! To which Adam Silver can say, no we're not. The kids can play over seas or in the D-League. There is no requirement for college. And so on. If NCAA makes Fr ineligible. The NBDL and Europe became much more realistic options for one and done players. Not sure I agree with it, but IMO that's the NCAA's best course of action.
 

scher215 said:
I think you're right about freshman ineligibility. The NCAA can go to the NBA and say change it you are ruining our game! To which Adam Silver can say, no we're not. The kids can play over seas or in the D-League. There is no requirement for college. And so on. If NCAA makes Fr ineligible. The NBDL and Europe became much more realistic options for one and done players. Not sure I agree with it, but IMO that's the NCAA's best course of action.
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And I would have no problem with that.

College basketball should be played by actual college students.

Don't really care for two and dones either.
 

BBQ Platypus said:
The solution is to get rid of the college requirement for the NBA entirely. It's absurd. We're perfectly okay with baseball taking in players out of high school, but somehow it's a HUGE problem for basketball. Doing what MLB does - you can go straight to the pros or go to college, but in college you have to spend 2/3 years - would be a decent enough way of doing things.

The fears that underpin this rule are unfounded, at least from the players' perspective. Study after study has shown that players make *more* money if they come in from high school - they're not being fed to the wolves, they're getting an extra contract negotiation period during their prime. The players don't benefit from the current arrangement and neither do the fans. The only beneficiaries are the NBA owners, who get an extra year of player development for free at the expense of the college tuition payer, ticket buyer, and even taxpayer in the case of publicly funded universities.

It would also be slightly less egregiously unfair if the players were treated as employees of the university whilst being deprived of a year of professional income, but hey, that's just crazy talk.
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WHAT? Slow down there.

NBA can make its own rules on who they want to hire or not. That doesn't change college basketball at all. College basketball can make its own rules on who plays where and for how long. You don't like guys leaving early? Then make scholarships dependent on playing 3 years. You want to go play pro right out of high school, head to China baby. They love ballers over there. Nobody is stopping kids from playing pro. You just have to go where the jobs are.
 



Sparlimb said:
WHAT? Slow down there.

NBA can make its own rules on who they want to hire or not. That doesn't change college basketball at all. College basketball can make its own rules on who plays where and for how long. You don't like guys leaving early? Then make scholarships dependent on playing 3 years. You want to go play pro right out of high school, head to China baby. They love ballers over there. Nobody is stopping kids from playing pro. You just have to go where the jobs are.
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I don't see how that would work. If there were a three year rule for the scholarship, how would it be enforced? Its tough for the NCAA to punish a kid who isn't in college anymore
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
I don't see how that would work. If there were a three year rule for the scholarship, how would it be enforced? Its tough for the NCAA to punish a kid who isn't in college anymore
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Agreed. I can't think of any way to make it work. You can't really require kids to stay in school. I suppose what you could do is go with the freshmen don't get to play rule. That pretty much forces kids to go two years if they want to play college ball. Those that can't hack college would be forced to choose something else. My whole point is that the NBA is doing what's best for the NBA and that doesn't need to have any bearing on what the NCAA chooses to do.
 

Sparlimb said:
Agreed. I can't think of any way to make it work. You can't really require kids to stay in school. I suppose what you could do is go with the freshmen don't get to play rule. That pretty much forces kids to go two years if they want to play college ball. Those that can't hack college would be forced to choose something else. My whole point is that the NBA is doing what's best for the NBA and that doesn't need to have any bearing on what the NCAA chooses to do.
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There isn't.

Can you even imagine trying to enforce such a thing.
 

Making freshman ineligible is stupid, pretty much going to have be for all sports not just basketball. If you make freshman ineligible the NBA will start drafting out of high school again. Kids drop out of college all the time to work ...that is a fact of life.
 

The Brain Trust said:
Making freshman ineligible is stupid, pretty much going to have be for all sports not just basketball. If you make freshman ineligible the NBA will start drafting out of high school again. Kids drop out of college all the time to work ...that is a fact of life.
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That's what Station said he's okay with, and I agree with that. There is one more entity in all this though. Not sure how this would affect TV but they wouldn't be be for it I'd think. Fewer stars to market and they might try to shell out less money for rights. You don't think Okafor and Towns brought more viewers to college basketball this year? The void would be filled but it might not be the same.
 

Sparlimb said:
Agreed. I can't think of any way to make it work. You can't really require kids to stay in school. I suppose what you could do is go with the freshmen don't get to play rule. That pretty much forces kids to go two years if they want to play college ball. Those that can't hack college would be forced to choose something else. My whole point is that the NBA is doing what's best for the NBA and that doesn't need to have any bearing on what the NCAA chooses to do.
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Definitely agree with the bold.
 

The Brain Trust said:
If you make freshman ineligible the NBA will start drafting out of high school again.
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That is precisely the B1G's goal in floating this "proposal". The conference doesn't really want all freshmen to be ineligible, they want to get rid of the one and done guys who are only in classes 1 semester and only came because the NBA wouldn't let them in yet.
 

The Brain Trust said:
Making freshman ineligible is stupid, pretty much going to have be for all sports not just basketball. If you make freshman ineligible the NBA will start drafting out of high school again. Kids drop out of college all the time to work ...that is a fact of life.
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I disagree. I think NBA keeps the rule and pumps money into the NBDL seeing if they can create a product that rivals the NCAA and attracts most of the elite talent. I do also wonder how worried the NCAA is that losing elite talent will hurt their product and income? Would viewership remain high enough in NCAA with less elite players or would ESPN follow the talent and start broadcasting NBDL games like they do the NCAA? Comes down to if the majority of ratings for the NCAA comes from the school name or the player name.
 

Mulligan said:
That's what Station said he's okay with, and I agree with that. There is one more entity in all this though. Not sure how this would affect TV but they wouldn't be be for it I'd think. Fewer stars to market and they might try to shell out less money for rights. You don't think Okafor and Towns brought more viewers to college basketball this year? The void would be filled but it might not be the same.
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I don't think they had any effect on BTN.

It's an unknown, but if Towns and Okafor were playing in D league or overseas, people would not hear that much about them, and Duke and Ky would be just as well followed and supported by their fans.
 

station19 said:
I don't think they had any effect on BTN. It's an unknown, but if Towns and Okafor were playing in D league or overseas, people would not hear that much about them, and Duke and Ky would be just as well followed and supported by their fans.
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If you take just those two out sure, I honestly don't know, but what if Tyus, Winslow, and Okafor all play NBDL. As well as Towns, WCS, Harrison twins, etc. that gets a little harder to answer. Sure their die hard fans would still support them, but do those fans make up enough to keep ESPN interested? That I don't know.
 

station19 said:
It's an unknown, but if Towns and Okafor were playing in D league or overseas, people would not hear that much about them, and Duke and Ky would be just as well followed and supported by their fans.
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Exactly. Losing the one and done guys to NBDL or overseas will not hurt NCAA basketball at all. People love their schools and they love the NCAA tournament and all the upsets/close games. All of that will still happen even if you water down the talent pool a little. It also will allow those kids smart enough to go to College a chance to learn the skills of basketball before they go to the NBA.
 


Kids quit college to work all the time, the vast majority are not athletes...where is the concern a about them quitting school to earn a living? b
 


scher215 said:
If you take just those two out sure, I honestly don't know, but what if Tyus, Winslow, and Okafor all play NBDL. As well as Towns, WCS, Harrison twins, etc. that gets a little harder to answer. Sure their die hard fans would still support them, but do those fans make up enough to keep ESPN interested? That I don't know.
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Old way was they stayed for four years. Think how many NBA players would still be in schools under those rules.

Now compare the popularity of college basketball now compared to the 70's or when ever it changed.

The TV money and the price of admission(along with psl's) has gone up and up. The lack of all those players hasn't seemed to dampen the enthusiasm of college BB.
 

If it's cool for an outsider to jump in... I'd love to join this discussion. I've been talking about this with others elsewhere, and feel strongly about it too. I think it's garbage that NCAA basketball is being treated like a minor league system for the NBA - and it is. In fact, in an online discussion, I had an NBA columnist for The Sporting News defend it with exactly that argument - that it's good for the NBA, and the d-league sucks. Are you kidding me?
I'm in the camp that would like to see the 1 year requirement dropped. If kids want to go pro immediately, let them. Save the college spots for kids who, you know, want to go to college. I realize that it's completely unlikely that the NBA will do that themselves. They benefit from it - and I also wonder if they put it in place initially to appease the NCAA (and the money interests there). The columnist argued that the d-league has lousy competition and coaching, so nobody wants to go there. But I think that's circular logic. Nobody goes there, so it sucks, so nobody goes there. Make it a viable option, and it will be fine. Probably even a marketable product that fans would watch. MiLB teams do just fine, I think. I checked it out and d-league rookies get about 25k/yr. No wonder nobody wants to go there. The leagues overseas may drive that too; as somebody said above, coaches don't want to fly to China to recruit.

How to make it happen is the hard part. Could the NCAA members require a contract of sorts? Money repaid if a player goes pro? Hell, maybe even a cut of earnings for X years. And here's a tough one - maybe schools lose those schollies if players go pro, for the balance of their 4 years? Would make the schools look carefully at prospects' goals. Just a thought...

I put up a post about it, check it if you're interested: No Curtain. A few quick bullets from it - these are from the NCAA's site, their "mission" - a belief in and commitment to:
- The collegiate model of athletics in which students participate as an avocation, balancing their academic, social and athletics experiences.
- The pursuit of excellence in both academics and athletics.

Pure garbage, and dishonest.
 

LehighFan said:
If it's cool for an outsider to jump in... I'd love to join this discussion. I've been talking about this with others elsewhere, and feel strongly about it too. I think it's garbage that NCAA basketball is being treated like a minor league system for the NBA - and it is. In fact, in an online discussion, I had an NBA columnist for The Sporting News defend it with exactly that argument - that it's good for the NBA, and the d-league sucks. Are you kidding me? I'm in the camp that would like to see the 1 year requirement dropped. If kids want to go pro immediately, let them. Save the college spots for kids who, you know, want to go to college. I realize that it's completely unlikely that the NBA will do that themselves. They benefit from it - and I also wonder if they put it in place initially to appease the NCAA (and the money interests there). The columnist argued that the d-league has lousy competition and coaching, so nobody wants to go there. But I think that's circular logic. Nobody goes there, so it sucks, so nobody goes there. Make it a viable option, and it will be fine. Probably even a marketable product that fans would watch. MiLB teams do just fine, I think. I checked it out and d-league rookies get about 25k/yr. No wonder nobody wants to go there. The leagues overseas may drive that too; as somebody said above, coaches don't want to fly to China to recruit. How to make it happen is the hard part. Could the NCAA members require a contract of sorts? Money repaid if a player goes pro? Hell, maybe even a cut of earnings for X years. And here's a tough one - maybe schools lose those schollies if players go pro, for the balance of their 4 years? Would make the schools look carefully at prospects' goals. Just a thought... I put up a post about it, check it if you're interested: No Curtain. A few quick bullets from it - these are from the NCAA's site, their "mission" - a belief in and commitment to: - The collegiate model of athletics in which students participate as an avocation, balancing their academic, social and athletics experiences. - The pursuit of excellence in both academics and athletics. Pure garbage, and dishonest.
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I agree you should be able to go pro out of high school, however I also don't think that sets up an environment where all of a sudden the NCAA is made up of entirely "student first" athletes. You'll still have one and done players, the amount of guys going pro out of high school was never really that high anyways.

I've said this before here, but IMO the best way to accomplish what Northwestern wants to here is to strengthen the NBDL so that kids don't see the NCAA as the minor league system and the NBA needs to no longer see it that way by investing into the NBDL. Regardless of their draft entry rules.

If even 50% of players with NBA aspirations went NBDL you'd see huge changes to the type of player in the NCAA (Id argue changes in a negative way, but that's a different discussion)
 

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