[McDunkin]

A freshman point guard averaging a little over 10 points per game wouldn’t usually merit multiple mentions in the editorial section of the New York Times. But the story of UConn’s Ryan Boatright, and the series of suspensions he received earlier in the season, is a perfect example of the blatant hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the NCAA.

As Times columnist Joe Nocera outlined in a series of devastating columns, Boatright was suspended because his mother received “impermissible benefits” from a “third party” during his recruitment.

Translated into English, Tanesha Boatright, a struggling single mom with four young children, received some money from Reggie Rose, the older brother of Derrick Rose, the Chicago Bulls MVP and one of her son’s AAU coaches. She used that money to make some payments on her car as well as accompany Ryan on college recruiting trips.

While Boatright was one of the Top-50 players in the country last year, at (a generous) 6’0, 160, his NBA future is far from assured. Due to the importance of size defensively, a player of his stature essentially has no margin for error if he wants to be drafted. Of the approximately 450 players in the NBA, only a handful — Will Bynum (Detroit), Isaiah Thomas (Washington), Nate Robinson (Golden State), JJ Barea (Minnesota), DJ Augustin (Charlotte), Sebastian Telfair (Phoenix) — are 6’0 and under.

So, because of the NBA’s refusal to make any kind of substantial investment in amateur basketball, Boatright has no choice but to attend an NCAA institution to become a professional basketball player. With dozens of quality 22-year-old college guards coming into the D-League each season, why would an NBA team bother to take a chance on one who didn’t follow the conventional path?

For a Top-50 recruit like Boatright, a player with a legitimate, but not a guaranteed, shot at the NBA, picking the right college is one of the most important decisions of his life. And as anyone who ever watched He Got Game knows, there are a lot of unsavory ways to sway an 18-year-old on a recruiting trip.

For most of the NCAA’s middle and upper-class students, choosing a college without their parents seeing it first would be unthinkable. But how exactly was Ryan’s working-class mother, who lives in Illinois, supposed to be accompany him to Connecticut? According to the NCAA’s logic, by accepting money from a friend for a plane ticket, she was jeopardizing her son’s amateur status.

Taking this idea to its logical conclusion, the NCAA reserves the absolute right to dictate who the parents of its “student-athletes” associate with personally and professionally. After all, an agent or a school could use any third party to funnel money to Tanesha Boatright, therefore, in theory, no one should be able to give her money for any reason while her son is playing college basketball.

The only people allowed to make money off her son are the schools themselves, who signed a 14-year $11 billion deal for the TV rights to March Madness in 2010. The NCAA is making over a billion dollars a year televising the exploits of players like Boatright, yet they nearly ruined his career, and his family’s once-in-a-lifetime chance to break out a cycle of poverty that goes back generations, over a couple thousand dollars.

The Boatright family wasn’t even trying to divert any of the prodigious sums of money the NCAA makes off men’s basketball; they were just trying to do everything possible to ensure their son had the best chance of eventually playing in the NBA.

Strip away the pageantry and high-minded tradition, and the NCAA’s business model is clear: using the widespread interest and popularity generated by the athletic ability of lower-income football and basketball players to subsidize scholarships for golfers, tennis players and swimmers playing sports that no one watches or cares about. After all, if a family can afford to make their son a world-class golfer, they can probably afford the cost of college.

Of course, as anyone who has followed college sports over the last generation already knows, there’s no fighting the forces of the free market. Because they can’t compete over the salaries of their players, schools have invested tens of millions in coaching salaries and practice facilities in an escalating arms race to gain an advantage in recruiting. Meanwhile, the more the NCAA squeezes young players, the more that wind up slipping through their fingers.

That’s why they are so quick to attack someone like Ryan Boatright. He’s just another scalp they can use to threaten the next crop of high school athletes from associating with “undesirables” while patting themselves on the back for battling the scourge of third parties trying to exploit “amateur” athletes.

The only third party allowed to profit off college basketball players is the NCAA itself and they’ll fight to the bitter end to ensure it stays that way.

Read more: http://basketball.realgm.com/blog/218852/The_Audacity_Of_The_NCAA_On_Ryan_Boatright#ixzz1ljN8119I

[HitsterParticipant]

Wouldn’t you just love it if the NBA set up their own junior league that players could go to for a year or longer until they were drafted, if all the major sports did this they could vrtually destroy jock sports overnight.

Being from the UK I have a different view on University sports as the days when you got top class players from any sport via the University system has virtually ended. These guys were often excellent amateurs which is what I see the NCAA as, a load of rich guys who think that playing for your college is a privilege and they have a nice career or a rich family to fall back on.

 

[Mr. 19134Participant]

Yeah these articles get me so mad and it’s one of the main reasons I hate the NCAA and think they’re evil.  What his mother should do is actually find sue the NCAA in a class action civil suit for interffering or tryna to punish her son for her finding any means legally necessary to take part in his life.  She has a case. This needs to stop.  It’s simply inhumane to treat kids and parents this way.  

How is it ethical for the NCAA to make billions off of these kids but if they make one cent off of it well then you can jeapardize the career.  And to make matters worse the NBA made it to where these kids have no choice but to attend college for atleast a year.  That’s why I applaud guys like Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler who said if people are gonna make money off me then I want a cut and took their games internation.  I’d love to see more players do this.

 I would.  The main reason I would isn’t even for me, it’s because I come from a blue collar family who busted the behinds to put me and my cousins through catholic school only to see get less hours every month at work, have to take pay cuts, and find that the school have highered they’re tuitions.  I couldn’t have fun playing ball in college knowing my family is at home struggling to pay their mortgage.  Struggling to put food on the table every night despite having great work ethics.  

I know examples of kids who wanted to stay in college but just couldn’t because they’re families were struggling so bad were Delonte West and Kyle Lowry.  That’s just off the top of my head.  West wanted to come back for his Sr. year and would of improved his draft stock but he couldn’t his family needed help right away, and god forbid if somebody helped while West was in school.  And Lowry too.  Lowry is having a break out year but he’s already had this kind of talent, he was forced to leave Nova after his sophomore year for similar reasons.  Tyreke Evans, Dejuan Wagner are a few other names who come to mind who had to leave early.  Imagine how fun it would of been to see them guys finish they’re career in college but it’s nearly impossible these days.  Look at the trouble you can get and the alternatives is just riding it out while your family suffers at home, that’s not cool.

[ProudGrandpaParticipant]

Some of my best friends are the NCAA…

[PabloFiascoParticipant]

Almost makes you hope these kids take the Brandon Jennings route and go overseas for a year or two

[B FreeParticipant]

 If the NBA used the NBDL like baseball uses the minors NCAA basketball would be like its baseball, an after thought until thecollege World Series and even then people can’t name most of the stars.

[HitsterParticipant]

It was interesting to read that when the MLB first tried to introduce a draft that some of the major teams opposed it as their resourses allowed them to sign all the top young talent.

Imagine that in the NBA with the Lakers, Heat, Bulls etc all chasing Harrison Barnes, Anthony Davis and co.

I do like the MLB Free Agent compensatory picks which could work well in the NBA.

[raybeasParticipant]

The NBA needs to expand the DLeague and open it up to anyone with a highschool diploma. Let players earn $30-40K there (if they can) untill they are 23. Then they automatically go into the NBA draft pool, unless they declare earlier.

The NCAA would (crap) themsleves, but couldn’t complain without looking like they were just exploiting kids all along. Kids that wanted an education could still go to school (for free), and those who don’t can enter the "real world" of professional basketball.

[Author]

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