Kevin Connelly: Freshman ineligbility is a losing proposition

I picture University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari sitting in a dimly lit room, next to a burning fire, with a cat perched on his lap as he scrolls through his Twitter feed on his iPhone.

And as he comes across the headline, Conferences Reconsider Freshman Eligibility, he can’t help but let out a chorus of devilish laughter that echoes through the empty halls.

OK, so maybe he’s not the movie villain I picture him to be, but make no mistake about it — there’s not a coach in the country who’s getting a bigger kick out of the latest NCAA hot-button issue than Calipari.

For decades, the NCAA did not allow freshmen to play on football or basketball teams. That rule was thrown out in 1972 and since then, the NCAA’s revenue has skyrocketed to nearly $1 billion annually.

Yet on Thursday, the student newspaper at Maryland reported that the Big Ten Conference was attempting to garner support to explore the option of making freshmen ineligible again.

Why go back now?

First, let’s hear what Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott had to say in an interview last week on the one-and-done phenomenon in college basketball.

“Right now, the notion of one-and-done is an exaggeration — it’s less than one-and-done,” Scott said. “The student-athletes going to the NBA for the draft are not completing their second semesters.”

He’s not wrong. But what’s so wrong with that? If someone guaranteed you millions of dollars at the age of 19 or 20, you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t take it. Those who value a college education can go back and complete it any time they’d like. That kind of money may not be on the table three years later.

In a not-so-shocking revelation, Calipari agrees.

“Is that the best decision for these kids? Or are we worried about individual programs?” asked Calipari, who’s know for using the one-and-done concept to recruit future NBA talent to the Wildcats.

“Bill Gates leaves to go start a company, he’s fine. That kid’s a genius, and I’m happy for him. But this guy is ruining our college. What? I don’t get it.”

The “guy” Calipari is referencing is the rare freshman who leaves school early to declare for the NBA draft — which has become not so rare at Kentucky. But elsewhere around the country, they make up a minor percentage of a school’s overall student body.

If the NBA would get rid of its rule that a player has to be 19 and one year removed from high school graduation, this would be less of a problem. However, the NBA is smarter than that and team owners got burned by one too many Kwame Browns. He was drafted first overall in 2001 and played for seven different teams over his largely irrelevant 13-year career.

I understand how the one-and-done concept is bad for the overall game of college basketball, as well as the universities these students attend with no plan of graduating. But I’m not sure these universities have thought of the alternatives.

Let’s say, for instance, the NCAA enforces the freshman ineligibility rule. They’re now taking money out of not only their own pocket, but also the pockets of every university around the country that relies on the financial support athletics provide.

So now, instead of bringing elite athletes to a college campus — and extorting them for every penny as the NCAA likes to do — those athletes will find other alternatives, because that’s how business works. All the best basketball players will be playing in Europe and making money at 18 and 19 instead of making their universities, conferences and the NCAA money.

There’s also talk of select conferences enforcing the rule, which you can squash right now because that’s essentially a death wish for schools in that conference to be relevant again. What kid is going to attend Indiana, where he’d have to sit until he’s a sophomore, over Florida, where he can play right away.

The NCAA has already announced an increase in the minimum high school GPA required for admittance from 2.0 to 2.3 in 2016. That’s a start. If schools want to take a moral high ground, make admission standards ever more difficult than that and hold true to them.

Former Oklahoma senior associate athletic director Gerald Gurney broke the issue down to its core.

“The problem is the average fan simply doesn’t care,” he said. “They just want to be entertained and feel good about their school and keep the pretense what they’re seeing out there is real students. That’s nonsense. That’s not to say many athletes can’t get a good education. Most athletes can get that. The problem with college sports is not with the women’s lacrosse team or women’s tennis team. The problem is football and men’s basketball, and we have to come to terms with that.”

And the NCAA has to come to terms with the reality that those two sports are no longer about amateurism. They are a major business and there’s no turning back now.

Kevin Connelly is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at kconnelly@vindy. com and follow him on Twitter, @Connelly_Vindy.