What do you get when you force professionals to behave as college amateurs? You get the Fab Five of Michigan, that's what.
What we knew then is what we know now. Some of these kids are simply too good to deny them an opportunity to get paid right away. The only thing that we accomplish for a kid destined for the pro's is 6 months of more school and millions of dollars for the schools who get to use these athletes for at least one year (two if you play football).
If you get hurt in the process there is no insurance for your potential. The school doesn't even have to honor your scholarship, which is a year to year contract that must be renewed. Four years of guaranteed education is a reasonable exchange, but athletes who are worthy of going directly to the pro's could earn the value of a 4 year degree in the first year of a pro contract (with change to spare). The union was forced into this deal as a means of avoiding an NBA lockout. It might very well be criminal, especially in the face of the absence of such a restriction in every other sport around the entire earth.
The only distinction between the sports that allow teenagers to compete for a job right away and the one's that do not is the mass percentage of black people who compete in the two banned sports. Both the NBA and the NFL are complicit to the behavior because they, much like the college's who partake in the bounty, get the benefit of not overpaying for the uncertain potential of youth.
The history of drafting high schoolers has been a mixed bag. For every Kevin Garnett or Lebron James you have an Eddie Curry or Kwame Brown. One year players are still dominating the landscape even if the year of play helps eliminate the guessing game of it all. Essentially, the NBA has asked to be saved from themselves with this restriction.
So what is the end effect?
In the end, kids who are excellent athletes but horrible students get to compete in any sport that they are good at, except football and basketball. In these sports, you will be blocked from a career by your lack of educational prowess. Kids that succeed in school often have the support of one or two parents who keep them on track and teach them good study habits and time management skills. If you happen to do football and basketball well but not literature and math, you either fix the problem or forego a dream.
The end effect of forcing professional talent into the amateur ranks is what I mentioned before. It is the Fab Five of Michigan who all got money from the neighborhood mentor and lover of kids that may have also been a bookie on the side. Ed Martin probably did exactly what he is accused of doing for Chris Webber and many other kids in Detroit, especially the professional basketball player kids that he helped nurture. He gave them a hand up. For the really good ones like Chris Webber, he might have given more. I may have even told these pro's that he helped out "remember me when you make it".
In America, it is illegal to do this for a professional basketball player playing amateur college sports, but it is legal to force that professional to pass an ACT and pick a school for a year or two, just to be considered worthy to earn professionally. If you are a doctor, this type of restriction (aka certification) is universally accepted. In professional sports, no other country in the world recognizes such a restriction, and even the NBA will draft and pay an underaged European player but places a ban on US high school players at the same time.
Let me say this once more. US high school basketball and football players are the only athletes in the world who suffer such a restriction. Every other sport in every corner of the earth is free to earn income as soon as someone offers one.
While I certainly admire the efforts of the players from Northwestern, I have been critical of their class action law suit that would force colleges to pay the athletes. Title 9 has made this functionally impossible, because in order to pay any athlete, we have to pay every athlete the same. In the past, schools would balance their sports budget by eliminating sports that did not make much money. Typically, women's sports experienced the ax first, however, eliminating male sports instead of adding female sports has been another route towards Title 9 compliance.
Whereas large schools could easily pay all of the kids, smaller schools have a few sports supporting all of the others (and sometimes parts of the academic budget as well). Across the land, there simply is no easy way to pay every athlete and comply with Title 9 as well. As a result of this challenge, I believe this fight needs to leave the arena of profit sharing and enter the realm of corporate collusion .
Restricting only adolescent athletes in these two bigger, blacker sports is beyond the pale of understanding. It allows the NCAA the NBA and the NFL to have their cake and eat it too. Back when the Fab Five launched on the scene, they started wearing plain blue t-shirts in defiance of the system they recognized was raping them for every dime it could earn, and giving nothing back in return.
When the Fab Five decided to go baggy, Nike sold baggy shorts and put "Fab Five" on the marketing. Nobody did it before them, and nobody does it differently since. When they wore black socks for the first time, sock sellers across the land grabbed a sharpie and wrote "Fab Five" on their black sock signs.
It would be easy to say that nothing has changed but the date on the story. After all, the same ugly face of racial injustice that plagues America simply rears its ugly head in new ways from time to time.
The truth is that the NBA version of said injustice only began in 2005. Instead of simply forcing a rookie pay scale, the league saw the NCAA as fertile (and free) ground for a de facto farm league.
I don't think it can be reiterated enough. The fact that this restriction is only placed upon US high school kids either makes a statement about our failure to groom our kids, or is just another shady example of business in America.
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