Originally Posted by
Monmouth77
I don't disagree with this, necessarily. And I am not totally against going back to the 18 year old age limit. My point is a little different.
Stipulating that the 19-year-old age limit is the rule (as it is), I would rather muddle through with the current amalgam of "minor league" options, which range from college, to playing abroad (see Jennings, Brandon), to heading straight to the present-day D-League (not common) than try to set the conditions for a baseball-type minor league that might siphon off more than just future hall-of-famers like KG, LeBron, and Kobe, but could instead (as in baseball) professionalize most of the top talent at age 18.
In other words I don't want to see a system that operates to really cut the top talent layer out of the college game and turn the whole NCAA into the Missouri Valley Conference.
But my larger point was that it is not likely to happen because of the love for NCAA basketball and the history and place of the college game in the sport.
I do think, however, that we ought to lift some of the pretenses we have about "student athletes," even at a place like Duke. I knew engineering students on campus that weren't great writers, and prioritized their majors, but benefited from required courses in the humanities. Not sure why basketball players cannot benefit from (even if they don't excel at) the liberal arts education that sits in the background of their -- let's be honest -- primary pursuit. Why is a Duke basketball player different from a film student at Southern Cal who wants to make it in Hollywood? Or the software engineering student at Stanford who wants to create something and leave school as soon as possible to join a Silicon Valley start-up?