Originally Posted by
toooskies
You make a false analogy; you're claiming that students don't get to choose post-collegiate employers, so student athletes shouldn't have any control over how long they stay in college. Unless, of course, you're willing to call the NCAA or a college a student-athlete's employer, which is something that the NCAA has emphatically declared they are not.
College is the only real road to success. For an American kid to go to Europe and play for a year instead of college, there's one example of that-- Brandon Jennings. Counting 1st and 2nd round draft picks, that makes it a 200-1 chance for an American to go to Europe and also be drafted? 500-1? I'm not going to look it up, but it's way less than 1%. I don't know of anyone who has gone the D-League route. The options are hypotheticals; college is the only realistic choice for high school basketball players to develop skills for the NBA.
The difference between student-athletes and other students is that schools actively take advantage of the athletes for the school's gain. The school isn't making money off the pre-med other than tuition, which the student agrees to as price of admission. Duke makes millions off of the basketball program, and that's before you factor in the non-fiscal benefits of the program.
Athletes shouldn't be punished for having talents which schools want to make money off of; they should be rewarded.
I'm very much on the side of justice rather than the side of power in this argument.