We can see University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari standing up to his knees in beautifully blue grass as he is waving goodbye. The coach is not waving goodbye to his five players who are leaving for the NBA. He knew most of them would be gone. Whether or not he knew it would be five players is a matter of conjecture. Three of the players were freshmen, two were sophomores, which brings us to the one “one and done” rule that a player only has to be at the University of choice for one year.
It’s the dumbest rule ever made for college basketball. One year of eligibility means a player has to do hardly any classroom time and probably even less study time. So does this mean the University of Kentucky is a school for academic study or is it a comfortable situation that is in actuality a farm club for the NBA?
Now it doesn’t matter what we think about this … if you were 18 or 19 and could make the money these young men are going to make, you probably would do the same thing. It is, however, a total smoke screen for college athletics and the reality of so-called student athletes. “One and done” is absolutely dumb! To refer to these athletes as “students” is to refer to any of us as alcoholics because we walk by a liquor store.
We’ve known for a long time that these basketball players are hardly amateurs, but referring to them as students is equally a stretch. This is not to slam the University of Kentucky any more than any other Division I university, but it begs the question, what in blazes are these schools doing? Are they to educate, or be a launching platform for future NBA stars?
Nobody asked me, and I certainly don’t have the authority to blow the whistle and cry “foul” regarding the “one and done” rule, but American colleges and universities do… and they should.
Ronn Mott, a longtime radio personality in Terre Haute, writes commentaries for the Tribune-Star. His pieces are published Tuesday and Thursday on Tribstar.com, and in the print and online editions on Saturday.
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RONN MOTT’S MINUTE: “One and Done”
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