College Basketball- Are “ELITE,” Days Over?

By: Greg Rector

As many on Twitter already know I am no fan of the big business that call themselves NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION. For years I have felt they have deviated from what college athletics is suppose to be about, STUDENT-ATHLETES take note of the first word. Call me old-fashioned but I always felt the education component was more important than the athletic was. Now I understand that hasn’t been the case for many years, it still disappoints nonetheless.

Nowhere has this change in priority has been harder hit than the world of college basketball. I am old enough to remember when freshmen couldn’t play on the varsity teams. In 1968 the rules began to change and in the 1972-1973 year they were allowed to play in both basketball and football. The rule was in place to allow freshmen to concentrate on academics and adjusting to college life. Once that barrier came down we still saw education was the top priority and it was a a privilege to play an athlete’s given sport, while getting an education. What changed this landscape?

SPORTS AND MONEY:

For years college football games aired on the three main networks culminating in the New Year’s Day bowl games, while NCAA basketball was seen on a much smaller scale until the late 1970″s. With advent of cable TV the landscape of college sports was changed forever, and the NCAA realized they were sitting pretty in terms of revenues they could generate. You guessed it folks, the almighty dollar started to win out over education. This along with the realization of greater and greater rewards in the professional leagues by Student/Athletes, led us to a new era where something else began to change. You can’t deny a young adult the right to work and this applied to the athletes. In both football and basketball if a junior student-athlete could prove “Hardship,” given the fact that so many scholarship athlete’s came from poorer backgrounds they could leave school and be eligible to be drafted to the NFL or NBA. While the NFL was able to keep this to a minimum the NBA wasn’t able to do the same as in the 1970’s the rival ABA held no such rule in place and when Spencer Haywood challenged the NBA in an anti-trust case the NBA lost. This was the start of what we see today where players can opt to play just one season and opt to at age 19 turn professional. At that point though the vast majority of athletes were still staying in school for their full four years. This has meant that for the last forty or so years we have been treated to a group of schools in both football and basketball that have been considered “ELITE.”

POWER CONFERENCES:

As we all know in the NCAA there are 5 so-called Power Conferences, the Big Ten, The Pac 12, SEC, ACC, and the BIG 12 Conferences in football, while in college basketball there is the added of the G5 conferences. The five conferences are the American Athletic Conference (American), Conference USA (C-USA), Mid-American Conference (MAC), Mountain West Conference (MW), and Sun Belt Conference (Sun Belt). These conferences have generally given us the various “Elite,” programs we have all come to know. Even with the one and done rule in place, the likes of Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke etc… have been able to keep themselves at or near the top of the rankings year after year. That is now being challenged like never before and it’s based on three newer factors that is making it harder and harder for the the “Elite,” schools to remain that way.

GROWTH OF THE GAME:

As we all know the game of basketball is truly a global game second only to soccer in popularity. The vast pool of talent has grown not just in the United States but in every country. So if you aren’t recruited by one of these elite programs it really doesn’t mean you can’t go to a college and play at a very high level. As we have seen over the years in both football and basketball you can attend Arkansas- Little Rock and end up being drafted into the NBA. If you’re a Lakers fan you would know that was the path for for former guard Derek Fisher, just as an example, there’s countless more as we see each year. With so much talent available there’s no way the “Elite,’ schools can give everyone scholarships nor playing time. This has led to the growth of Mid-Major programs and as we all know these schools already give the big boys a run for their money annually.

BYPASSING COLLEGE:

Because you can’t stop any young adult from gainful employment and with a plethora of professional options were now seeing athletes like Lonzo Ball, skip college altogether and head overseas (Australia) to play in men’s leagues. This was also the path Luka Doncic took advantage of from the age of 15 by playing professionally in Europe. This gives the young athlete the opportunity to play at a level even above college basketball and is proving to prepare those players to be ready for the NBA level. Of course before the one and done rule was adopted we had Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Garnett, prove they could step right from a high school court and onto a NBA court. The talent pool for “Elite,” schools is falling with this happening more and more.

TRANSFER PORTAL:

Now we come to the single biggest change in college basketball (Football too) that will make it harder to remain “Elite,” the transfer portal and how it now operates. For many years you could transfer from one school to another, however when you transferred it also required that you sit out a season unless you were granted a transfer waiver. Well, those waivers have now become common practice. So as a college program you are now so far removed from the old days of a four year commitment from a scholarship athlete it’s not even funny. With a record 1573 players in the “Transfer portal,” currently you can see how hard it’s becoming to keep those athlete’s who are very good players but not exceptional i.e. declaring for the NBA draft in the school that recruited them. “Elite.” schools often have several 4 and 5 star recruits each season, but there’s only so much playing time. So now many of these athletes decide they need to go where they can play to be seen and make the leap to the next level.  See how I am not talking at all about education? You know the whole Student/Athlete dynamic that the NCAA still pretends to be about? Those days are long, long gone and won’t ever return. This is all big business from the schools and by a generation of athletes that understand that is the case. In just four years the portal has grown from under 400 to almost 4 times that amount. This means that schools like UNC and Duke can no longer rely on recruiting an athlete who plays a little but is being relied upon to fill a bigger role as a sophomore or a junior. For those smaller schools though they do tend to keep athletes for three and four years. So when a young Duke squad runs into let’s say a Loyola-Chicago school with players who have matured as athletes, it’s getting harder and harder to win those games and the big “Elite,” programs are losing more of those games all the time. This is forcing the big boys to also go transfer portal hunting for players that didn’t already get into one of the power schools, but are seeking that second opportunity or like with former Florida point guard Andrew Nembhard, who was able to get a waiver after initially being a traditional transfer, he found himself at Gonzaga playing for a national championship. See how complex this is getting?

The rules of the recruiting game have been turned upside down. This is why we’re seeing the likes of UNC coach Roy Williams retire, and Coach K announcing he will do the same after this season from Duke. We simply won’t see a “Fab Five,” ever again at the college level for the “Elite,” schools. It’s going to be harder each year to recruit and keep those “glue,” guys that give teams enough depth to win in the very difficult one and done NCAA Tournament as well. Yes the big names will still draw the biggest names most of the time, but it’s no longer going to be a precursor to being there at the end of “March Madness,” cutting down the nets, or even reaching the Final Four on a regular basis. There are simply too many options out there now. It all leads back to the fact that whenever you see someone from the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis say anything like Student/Athlete you are being and have been being lied to for a long time.

As always you can find me on Twitter @GregCowboys