(This is my first blog, so bear with me if it's not perfect)
I love college basketball. I love following the local team then following who is in the top 5 nationwide. I love march madness, the best tournament in sports. But ever since the rule forcing high school prospects to go to college, college basketball has looked more like an NBA prep league than a league of its own.
This rule has its benefits. It prevents kids coming to the NBA when they might not be ready. It also helps the prospects gain experience at the collegiate level. And in Kevin Durants case, it helped him go up far in the draft. So this rule is great for the kids coming out of high school. But it is ruining college basketball.
Guys like Michael Beasley of Kansas State, OJ Mayo of USC, Eric Gordan of Indiana to name a few, and of course Durant and Greg Oden last year, are clearly men amung boys. They come into the league, dominate for 1 year, and then leave before we get to know them. They take the Player of the Year award away from a deserving upperclassman who has been in college basketball for a while. These guys belong in the NBA, because they are too good for college basketball.
And maybe it's not the skill level that bothers me. It's the fact that they come for 1 year and then leave. If the NBA is going to make these players go to college, they should at least be like college football and make them stay until their junior year.
And what will happen to their teams? Props to Texas for staying competitive without Durant, but Ohio State fell off the map. Kansas State has never been competitive until this year, so will they go back to being average? I deeply respect the UConn and North Carolina championship teams of a few years ago and last years Florida Gators. All three of those teams had players that were upperclassmen that could have gone pro but didn't. Most of the time that won't happen. If they're good enough, the players go where the money is. As we've seen of recent years, loyalty wins championships but with the great financial oppertunities of the NBA, players forget about their alma mater and go for the money.
Basically what I'm ranting about is the lack of loyalty for college basketball and the rule preventing worthy prospects from jumping to the NBA out of high school.
Thank you for reading my first blog!!
