Earlier this week the University of North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes announced that he will return to the university and play his sophomore season for the Tar Heels basketball team.
Usually this would be considered a ho-hum announcement that thousands of college players don’t actually make because they just show up for their sophomore year.
Barnes is much different than the usual collegiate player heading into his second year of school, however. He has given up a chance to enter the National Basketball Association as the No. 1 overall draft pick this summer. That pick comes with a guaranteed $3 million per year salary for three years. No player who was expected to be the overall No. 1 pick as ever returned to school.
Barnes, before this week, was part of a growing group of college basketball players known as “one-and-doners.” These players enroll at a university, play for one year and then bolt for the NBA. Until the early 2000s, players could enter the NBA draft at 18. The NBA, to combat against a plethora of young men skipping college and entering the NBA only to fail, changed the age requirement to 19. This caused college basketball’s current problem of the one-and-done hoopster.
One-year college basketball players are not good for the integrity of college basketball. These youth do not epitomize what it means to be a student athlete. They go to class for only as long as they need to because they know they are not there to get an education.
Last season, the University of Kentucky had four of these players on its team. Daniel Orton, a center for Kentucky who was not a starter, stopped going to class in the spring. He was drafted in the first round, but spent this season wallowing in the NBA Development League. He will be lucky if he ever finds a steady job in the NBA. He had no choice but to continue his quest toward last season’s draft because once he stopped going to class, the NCAA would’ve ruled him ineligible to return to Kentucky’s team. The other three Kentucky freshmen also left school for the NBA.
On Wednesday, two more Kentucky freshmen declared for the NBA draft.
Speaking of Kentucky, its coach John Calipari is known for living off these one-and-done players. Most famously among the college basketball ranks is his recruitment and commitment of Derrick Rose. The now star NBA-point guard for the Chicago Bulls played one season for Calipari at the University of Memphis. He left for the NBA and became a top draft pick.
A year later, however, the NCAA investigated Calipari, Rose and the university for tampering with Rose’s SAT scores. The NCAA said it had reason to believe that Rose didn’t take the standardized test required to enter college. As a punishment, it ruled that Memphis must relinquish its 2007 NCAA runners-up banner and its 30-plus wins that season for playing an ineligible player.
It’s no secret that high-level collegiate athletics have always had scandals regarding the payment of players, illegal gifts given to players’ families and so on. The one-and-done players are only elevating the risk of these practices, which damage a university’s integrity and bank accounts.
It’s true that these athletes have the right to pursue their dreams of playing professional basketball, and they have the right to make money. There should be, however, some system that still protects the universities who invest in these students.
The NBA does not have a true minor league system, as do Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. These leagues allow an athlete to enter their respective drafts, and if the player doesn’t like his draft position, he can opt to go to college. If he chooses college, however, he commits to that school or at least three years. The NBA should consider the same system.
It would allow a player, if good enough, to jump straight to the NBA and not waste a school’s money and time in his recruitment and minimal education. If the player isn’t drafted or doesn’t like his position, then he can go to school, but he must commit to that school and at least have a chance to be a student athlete and earn a college degree. Either way it is a win-win situation for the athlete, the university and the league.
Harrison Barnes’ move to return to college instead of skipping to the NBA might begin changing an athletic culture that is in dire need of repair.
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Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via e-mail at kristenm@journaltribune.com.
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