NCAA Rumblings

First off, I would like to congratulate the University of Connecticut for winning the 2011 Men’s Basketball National Championship. They certainly had a great run and they deserve to go down in history as champions for winning the NCAA Championship.

Secondly, I need to say that I love March Madness. The 64 team tournament field is perfect. I have so many good memories waiting until Monday morning after Selection Sunday to cut out “the bracket” out of the morning paper and keep it in front of the TV so I could fill it out as the games progressed. The first weekend of the tournament is easily the best time of the year. Honestly, I think Thursday and Friday should be national holidays (along with baseball’s opening day). Heck, I’ve even taped a hundred square foot bracket to my wall to get into the action.

Shirking responsibilities and family commitments in order to watch college hoops is pure bliss. It astonishes me how I can fall in love with a team and a coach that I have never even heard of previously as they try and take down a traditional power with back-door screens, gritty defense, and last second heroics and then immediately fall in love with four more teams who trying to do the very same thing.
This year was no different on that accord. We saw small schools upsetting goliaths like Kansas and Georgetown. However, this year was also the final blow that helped America realize that this tournament is not the same as it used to be.

Just take a look at the championship matchup, Butler versus UConn. UConn, a traditional power in the power conference of all power conferences, the Big East, finished ninth…NINTH! Most conferences don’t even have nine teams. UConn may have missed the tournament altogether if they hadn’t have started their tear by winning the Big East conference tournament. Don’t get me wrong, Kemba Walker is a great college player and Jim Calhoun is a hall of fame coach, but UConn is NOT a great team. They just aren’t.

Butler is much of the same, yet different. Butler showed us why their needs to be a playoff - a second straight championship game out of the Horizon League. Butler can and did play with anyone in the country, and to me, that’s where the problem lies. Butler is not a great team. They have some nice players who play hard and play smart, but those guys aren’t going to make it in the NBA. They can play with anyone, but UConn just overmatched them. Butler couldn’t buy a bucket inside (please excuse the cliché…although for all we know, maybe someone was buying buckets). UConn’s Alex Oriakhi was just a dominating presence inside. Butler’s bigs just couldn’t put the ball in the hoop, plain and simple, to the tune of 18.8% shooting.

That’s what brings me to my main point: this Butler team should not be able to play with anyone in the nation. They were severely overmatched by a good, but not great team that got hot, but only finished ninth in their conference. There are no great teams. Let’s look at some of the other teams in the past twenty years who have made consecutive Final Four appearances. 1990-’91 UNLV Runnin’ Rebels. 1990-’92 Duke teams featuring Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley and Christian Leattner. 1995, 1997-’98 North Carolina teams with loads of NBA talent. Even the Florida teams from 2006-’07 had deep NBA talent between Al Horford and Joakim Noah, who decided to stay a few extra years in college to win and develop their respective games.

I’m sure you have heard a thousand times before; there is so much parity in today’s game. Well…they’re right. There is. And to some extent it’s not bad, but to the extent that we are subject to games like we saw Monday night, with a combined 94 points it is almost too much to bear. I want my champions to be champions. I want to see superstars win the national title. And if every once in a blue moon some no name school shocks the world, then awesome. I want to see that. I want to see the Cinderella story. I just don’t want Christmas to come every morning. It loses its value. And I think that is what we saw the past two years with Butler. Now, if Brad Stevens can turn that program into a legitimate powerhouse, that attracts top talent, then that’s also great. I respect that and think that the tournament opens up the door to teams that may not have had a chance.

Now, the real crux of the problem is not the rise of some of these mid-major schools siphoning some good talent away from The UCLA’s and the Duke’s of the world. The real problem lies with the NBA. The NBA is continuing to harvest before the crop is ready. Kids are going to school with the knowledge, not just the idea, but the knowledge that they are going to declare for the draft as soon as their first season is over. Kentucky’s sixth man was drafted in the first round last year for crying out loud! That is ridiculous to me. Not only does that hurt college basketball, but it hurts the NBA as well. General managers and owners are too scared that they are going to miss the next big thing they overlook playing performance for potential. Brandon Knight, I think, is a prime example. He is nowhere near the level of John Wall and Derrick Rose were at when they left John Calipari’s system after one season. Yet, he will probably still be a top ten pick in this year’s draft, because some team will see his raw athleticism and the fact that he played for John Calipari.

The NBA can fix this problem quite easily. They just need to get the owners and the NBPA together and hash out an extended age limit to the one already in place. I would like to see the same rule as in the NFL: three years out of high school. Look, these players are still going to make it to the NBA, they are also going to be better prepared when they make the jump. They will have played against better competition in college. They will have had more time to work on some of the more fundamental aspects of the game, and the NBA decision makers will have a deeper understanding of how good a player is and how adept he is at handling many different circumstances.

Right now the NFL requires that a player be three years removed from high school in order to declare for the draft. The NBA requires a player to be at least 19 years old. Some argue that these limitations are neither fair nor legal. However, they are legal. Former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett lost in a lawsuit that would have allowed him to declare for the NFL draft after only one season at Ohio State.

Changing this rule would not only help both basketball in the NBA and the NCAA, but it would be more beneficial to these kids. Requiring them to stay at least three years requires them to take their education seriously. No longer can a player enroll in fall semester with 12 credits of English, baking, sports and dancing then skip class every day in the spring because he knows that his paycheck is coming in June and he doesn’t need those classes anymore.

It’s the right thing to do and not just for sports fans like me who might not be able to stomach another “championship” game like the one we just witnessed, but also for the good of the game and for the good of the children. Please, do it for the children!