The ideal (or old school) NCAA focused on amateurism and the student-athlete (SA). The prospective SA chose a school where he could participate in a sport or sports. He would still be considered an amateur even if he was getting money in the form of a scholarship to attend the school because of the sport he played. The NCAA has gone so far astray from these basic tenets, that professional sports now leans on the NCAA as its own homegrown minor league. The NCAA has unwittingly taken on a significant share of what should be the problems of the professional sports themselves.
Professional football in the NFL is the most taxing of the big four sports. The physicality of this sport at the highest level requires that the athlete have a mature physique not generally developed enough by age 18 to survive the brute force associated with the sport. I don’t know about you, but a 275 pound linebacker barreling in to me at full running speed could only take place once (If you have met me, then you know what I mean). The NCAA is providing the physical training ground for future NFL pros.
The NBA relies upon the NCAA for a different kind of maturity. 16, 17, and 18 year olds can dunk, pass a ball, and otherwise play at a professional level, but a 17 year old or younger athlete is usually not mature enough to handle the off court responsibility of being a professional basketball player. Me trying to be responsible while earning my $893,000 MINIMUM (yup, minimum) salary as a 16 year old NBA rookie probably wouldn’t go so well.
The MLB at best is a convoluted system… enter the draft straight out of HS and start out in the minors (or leap to the majors if exceptional); go to a four year school, then complete your junior year of college; or go to junior college and leave whenever you’d like. In the favorite words of a former assistant coach of mine, ‘Wait, what?’. So if an athlete chooses to begin at a four year college in the sport of baseball, they have to either, finish their junior year, or transfer to a JUCO where they participate in one season, then enter the draft? Let me get out my slide rule…
In the end, the pro sports that are requiring that athletes be a certain age, or stay in college a certain length of time, are actively participating in age discrimination. If an athlete – HS graduate or not, college attendee or not, minor league participant or not – is the adult age of 18 on the first day of practice in the professional season, it should be his or her right to go pro at his or her own risk. The PGA, ATP, and NASCAR have it right. The participant in each case attempts entry to the pro ranks at their own risk developmentally and financially. While there are avenues to the PGA and ATP through college, with the exception of the true education (gasp!) gained at the college, the development of the athlete is dedicated to the sport itself.
The NCAA needs to move to a format that doesn’t confuse the pro sports business with the student athlete business. The NCAA puts out commercials attempting to leave you with your fingers in your dimples singing kumbaya (see the classic ‘99% of athletes in the NCAA will never go pro’). However, remember that without the questionable entry rules of the pro leagues, the quality of college football Saturdays would be leaving you with tailgate indigestion, and the level of basketball prowess during March Madness would look more like march silliness.
Paul MacDonald - Sports Broadcaster 