The NCAA Is Going Old School to Screw Over Student-Athletes Now

There was a time when freshmen were not eligible to play athletics the first year they were in college. This rule has changed, but now to combat the one-and-done rule that the NBA has forced on college basketball, there is some consideration to making freshmen ineligible again. I think this is a bad idea and is an example of further screwing over student-athletes who have no interest in being in college by basically forcing them to stay two years under the guise of "academic reasons." I am somewhat happy that the NCAA is thinking of ways to combat the one-and-done rule, but I don't think making freshmen ineligible to compete in athletics is the way to go about combating the rule. It just further puts student-athletes in the middle of the pissing contest between the NBA and the NCAA.

The item was No. 7 on a 10-point list for NCAA reform ideas that Pac-12 presidents and chancellors sent their Power Five colleagues last May.

7. Address the “one and done” phenomenon in men's basketball. If the National Basketball Association and its Players Association are unable to agree on raising the age limit for players, consider restoring the freshman ineligibility rule in men's basketball.

Several conference commissioners say it's time to consider making freshmen -- or at least some of them -- ineligible, again, for the first time since the NCAA rule changed in 1972.

Really this is only a huge issue when it comes to college basketball. There are true freshmen who play football that this rule wouldn't affect because they can't leave after one year of eligibility anyway. This rule would be to combat the dumb one-and-done rule, which is a rule the NBA has imposed on the NCAA and the NCAA has been too stupid to figure out how to combat previously. Naturally, the NCAA's reaction is to further screw over the student-athletes. I don't really think this idea will be implemented any time soon, but it just goes to show how the NCAA and their conferences tend to think.

One-and-done players in men's basketball are the main reason some commissioners want this discussion to occur, and it's not clear whether freshman eligibility interest would decrease should NBA commissioner Adam Silver get his way by pushing the NBA's age limit from 19 to 20 years old.

Probably not, but it would be just like the NCAA to still make freshmen ineligible while the NBA now pushes the age limit to 20, thereby basically ensuring NBA-bound athletes would still only play one year at the college level.

“I've had conversations with several commissioners about (freshman ineligibility),” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said. “We are pushing, and I think you will see much more serious conversations about it in the coming months and year.”

Yep, get bent.

There are many unanswered questions, of course. Would scholarships have to be added and increase costs?

Probably. There would need to more scholarships because a school has to field a full team, while also giving scholarships to freshmen who won't play.

Would all freshmen have to sit, or only those who do not reach an academic benchmark?

If not, the academic benchmark would quickly become a fraud where every freshmen is reaching the benchmark so that every freshmen can play. The chances for there to be even more academic fraud would increase.

Is the idea only to better prepare athletes academically or is it to also integrate them socially? Does freshman ineligibility even accomplish one or both of those goals?

Nope and nope. Student-athletes who just want to play in the NBA will still want to just play in the NBA, only for a longer span of time while attending college, and while either learning or not learning.

Others believe now is the time to consider it again given court cases that could allow players to be paid, Congressional scrutiny into college sports, and a unionization attempt to make Northwestern football players designated as employees. A new lawsuit against the NCAA and North Carolina attacks the heart of the NCAA's stated mission: Are enough high-profile college athletes truly being educated?

The one-and-done guys aren't being educated, but that's the current state of affairs. The problem is the NCAA is running a highly lucrative business and being judged on whether they are educating high-profile college athletes. It's a business that also wants to educate. Schools are educating college athletes, but also running a business with other college athletes. You can't force someone to be educated.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said there is “almost a uniform acknowledgment that there's kids in college that don't have any interest in an education and don't have the proper education to take advantage of an education.” Bowlsby said freshman ineligibility would have a “profoundly positive effect” on football and men's basketball by easing the transition from high school without the distractions of competition.

Oh yes, in fantasy land. In the real world, these athletes will still practice with the team and be prepared to play in games while going on trips with the team, just without actually being able to play with the team. If a freshman doesn't want to be educated then he will find something else to distract him other than the competition of college athletics. Making freshmen ineligible is doing a disservice to those student-athletes who want to play in the NBA, by keeping up the sham for an additional year and lengthening the absurd illusion that Jahlil Okafor is at Duke to prepare academically for a job in the real world. If I were offered a job after my freshmen year where I could make millions of dollars, I would have dropped school in a second. I went to school to earn millions of dollars (mission not accomplished...ever), so if I have the chance to earn millions of dollars then I can also go back to school at my leisure at a later time.

Swofford said. “We're in a period now where everybody is trying to get a hold of the student-athlete experience and a recommitment, if you will, to balance academics and athletics.”

Right, it's for the kids, not to combat the NBA's one-and-done rule? Got it. So why does item #7 on the 10-point list for NCAA reform not mention academics at all and simply uses the freshmen ineligibility tool as a way to combat the one-and-done rule? It's about academics in every way except actually being about academics.

But that academic redshirt year is based on the NCAA's minimum standards. Universities regularly admit athletes into school below their school's own academic standards. This often causes challenges for some athletes that struggle to stay afloat academically; they are sometimes put into majors that may not help them once they're done playing, and they can even become cases of academic fraud given the pressure to do what is necessary to keep players eligible.

Athletes struggling academically is a real issue. I won't deny that. The pressure to keep players academically eligible won't decrease or disappear simply because freshmen aren't eligible. These standards don't just go away after the first year of college. It's even possible an athlete coasts through his first year not caring if he's eligible academically since he isn't eligible athletically and then it's even harder for that athlete to stay afloat during sophomore year because he is even further behind at that point.

But that academic redshirt year is based on the NCAA's minimum standards. Universities regularly admit athletes into school below their school's own academic standards. This often causes challenges for some athletes that struggle to stay afloat academically; they are sometimes put into majors that may not help them once they're done playing, and they can even become cases of academic fraud given the pressure to do what is necessary to keep players eligible.

See, it's not about academics. It's about the one-and-done rule. I favor the two-and-through rule or just letting these guys go to the NBA after high school. Two-and-through is different from making freshmen ineligible in that at least the athlete is participating in sports and honing the craft he will eventually make a career out of. 99% of college basketball players are there for an education AND sports, while two-and-through with the option of not attending college doesn't speaks to the reality 1% are there just to play basketball long enough to get to the NBA. I think it should be straight to high school or two-and-through. The student-athlete gets to choose which path he takes.

On average, 10 true freshmen have entered the NBA Draft each year from 2010-14. A freshman has been the NBA's No. 1 pick for five-straight years. Freshmen make up 36 percent of the NBA lottery picks in that same time period.

The one-and-done rule is bleeding NCAA basketball dry. It's creating teams with elite players, but also results in a lack of continuity from year-to-year and dilutes the product in the long-term. I love Jahlil Okafor, but if he doesn't want to be in college then I see no reason he should be there.

Freshman ineligibility “would do a lot to restore credibility and integrity to college basketball,” said Scott,

It would not. It would allow assholes like Larry Scott to point to freshmen ineligibility as proof he really cares when in reality it's just a response to the NBA's one-and-done rule. It's the result of a pissing contest, not genuine concern about academics.

“It would demonstrate they're students first on those teams and they're in class and getting grades that would keep them eligible. The reality of one-and-done is it's not even one. It's like half or three-quarters (of a school year) and done.”

And of course one and three-quarters of a school year with one year of athletics is SO MUCH BETTER. Problem solved, now the NCAA can wash the blood of shady academic fraud off their hands because THEY TRULY CARE. See how they don't let freshmen play during their freshmen year? This means these student-athletes have time to focus solely on academics for one year and then ignore academics completely for the second year.

“Keeping freshmen ineligible helped the marginal high school recruit adapt to college academic and social life before becoming preoccupied with big-time varsity sports,” former NCAA executive director Walter Byers wrote in “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes,” his 1997 memoir about his 37 years leading the NCAA.

Right, but freshmen being ineligible will only go to hurt the elite recruit who has no need to be adapted to college life before going to play in the NBA. Marginal recruits are not going to leave after one year to play in the NBA, so the freshmen ineligibility rule won't help them. Again, it could hurt them in that during their second year of college when classes get more difficult they are forced to juggle sports and athletics, which isn't something they had to do freshmen year. That's where the academic fraud starts. College can be a hard transition. It's best time management and other life skills are learned immediately, as opposed to delayed one more year.

“More important, it was a significant deterrent to quick-fix athletics recruiting, the unbridled desire of coaches to reach out indiscriminately for high school seniors to fill depleted varsity positions immediately.”

And how would making freshmen ineligible have a positive effect? Coaches would then would use quick-fix recruiting to fill depleted varsity spots two years from now. For example, John Calipari would know he's about to lose some players to the NBA, so he recruits Karl Towns to replace Willie Cauley-Stein and Tyler Ulis to replace one of the Harrison twins. There is no difference in the recruiting method, simply a difference in how quick the fix ends up happening. Instead of there being a quick-fix for depleted varsity positions, there is a pipeline of fixes for depleted varsity positions. It's not better because the outcome (that player leaving to go to the NBA without a degree) doesn't change. It's just the quick-fixes like Towns and Ulis are on the bench for one season.

In the decades since the change, repealing freshman ineligibility has periodically popped up. Legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, who died this week,

I'm sure the NCAA would claim he died because freshmen were eligible to play basketball.

often said freshmen should be ineligible and have to prove themselves as a student first before they have the privilege of playing basketball.

I'm not going to bash Dean Smith, but he coached in a different time when playing basketball was more of a privilege. It's not as much now. It's now much more about the student-athlete making money for the NCAA and school. In a perfect world, an athlete would prove himself as a student first before playing a sport, but NCAA basketball is not a perfect world.

Coach K also didn't like the one-and-done rule and he has had to adapt to it under the realization that living in a fairy tale world where he keeps talented basketball players for 3-4 years isn't realistic anymore. 

“Every time (freshman ineligibility) comes up, it's fairly quickly dismissed,” Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky said. “There needs to be a really strong rationale for it. Right now, you have some students that are coming to college -- in men's basketball in particular -- that have pro aspirations and want to move as quickly through the collegiate experience as possible. It might be an advantage that you don't have student-athletes on campus who don't really want to be student-athletes for their entire career.

I don't know if it is an advantage to have student-athletes on campus who don't want to student-athletes for their entire career. It's not simple to integrate one-and-done guys into a team with other talented players who are not going to be one-and-done. Roles change and are scaled back, which can affect how well a team performs. Plenty of good coaches have struggled with one-and-done, while teams that aren't as talented as other teams with one-and-done players (2010 Duke/Butler, 2011 UConn/Butler, 2014 UConn) have done well in the NCAA Tournament of late. In fact, go back through the list of teams who have won the NCAA Tournament. It's dominated by teams who have quality juniors and seniors playing key roles. Having one-and-done guys isn't a huge advantage to winning an NCAA title.

Atlantic 10 commissioner Bernadette McGlade estimated freshman ineligibility would add 25 percent in academic costs, adding “at some point I think there's a tipping point where there's just not enough dollars to go around.” If an entire freshman class -- or even just a handful of first-year players -- sat, coaches would inevitably want more scholarships in order to have the same number of available players on their squads for competition.

Exactly. What happens when 5-6 guys leave the team unexpectedly after a season and there are only 3 rising sophomores joining the team? That leaves the team depleted. When this happens now, it's a problem, but at least any recruited high school player making a late decision can play immediately during the next Fall semester.

“Another thing I don't think people mention enough: It's amazing the athletes do so much better academically when they're in a season,” McGlade said. “When you don't have this rigid schedule deadline, the mentality of an athlete is, ‘I've got all the time in the world.' I know many athletes and coaches and academic advisors, they sweat it out when their athletes are not in season.”

Very true as well. These student-athletes know they aren't playing during their freshmen year so some sort of apathy towards academics and hitting the ground running while in college can set in. It's the same way that high school students get "senioritis" because they know they are graduating and may not have to give their all during the end of their senior year due to already being in college.

“It sounds really good,” Steinbrecher said. “I don't think it addresses the academic issues people think it does. I think the literature and studies done show sitting as a freshman is not a predictor whether a person is successful academically by GPA or by graduation. Why are we making a group of kids ineligible for a year when for the vast majority of kids they're academically prepared to be there and to play?”

Notice earlier in this column how an average of 10 college athletes have been drafted in the NBA after their freshmen season. This freshmen ineligibility rule would be put into effect for 10-15 college athletes. That seems like killing a fly with a shotgun.

Freshmen ineligibility isn't as much of an issue in college football. It's an NBA-NCAA thing.

“Is there some academic standard you can hit that would earn you the right to play earlier?” Scott asked.

No. Absolutely not. If the NCAA wants academic fraud, then they would get a lot of academic fraud by allowing freshmen to hit an academic standard that allows them to play earlier. Every freshman this rule was enacted to "help" would hit the academic standard, thereby making it a useless rule, because if a student-athlete isn't leaving college after one year for the NBA anyway then the rule wouldn't serve it's intended effect.

Some get admitted into school barely able to read and stand two standard deviations below their university profile average for test scores and GPA, he said.

Is there really a belief this would stop happening if freshmen became ineligible to play sports? Really? Is the NCAA being that naive? Again, telling freshmen to sit out a year for academic reasons doesn't mean those freshmen will actually use that time to study and adapt to college. You can't force people to get an education they don't want.

The Drake Group proposes freshmen not compete for a year if they are admitted one standard deviation below the university academic profile average. Under the proposal, freshmen who sit would be limited to 10 hours of practice per week so they can be remediated academically.

This sounds good, but it also sounds like a good way for academic fraud to start at the high school level. I'm in favor of college student-athletes getting a great education, but the small percentage of students who are affected by the one-and-done rule are not there for an education, but to play in the NBA. I would love for every student-athlete to want a great education. Schools are going to want to put a revenue-earning product on the court and will do as much as possible between and outside the lines to make this happen.

The Kenneth Wainstein independent report showed more than 1,000 North Carolina athletes were pushed by academic counselors into a system of fraudulent, no-show classes that were used to keep players eligible. Students never had interaction with a faculty member in these African-American Studies classes and had grades assigned without considering the quality of work.

And so, back to the idea of freshmen being ineligible to play college sports. How would freshmen ineligibility prevent schools from creating fake classes that never meet and have no real instructor? It could still very well happen. In the case of UNC-CH, student-athletes were sophomores and juniors when they were pushed into these classes. This type of thing would still happen even if freshmen weren't eligible to play sports.

“It's not just the North Carolina situation,” Bowlsby said. “I think we've got to take a hard look at online classes and directed readings and independent study because they're just fraught with opportunity for abuses. You hate to not be able to do something for a student-athlete that others are entitled to do, but that might be what needs to happen.”

Okay. I'm failing to be made to understand how making a freshmen ineligible to play college sports will prevent these types of abuses. These are two separate issues and should be treated as such. College athletes need to be eligible to play sports, but this need doesn't stop after freshman year and athletes can still be steered towards no-show classes after freshman year.

“Time demands” is the buzz phrase that's going to be heavily discussed moving forward in college sports. Some leaders in college sports believe the NCAA's rule allowing 20 hours per week on athletics is broken, partly because of so many exemptions that don't count against the 20 hours.

For example, the rule doesn't count athletes' time spent traveling to competition or time getting medical treatment. Football games only count for three hours, not all of the time spent preparing for the game on a Friday and Saturday. In reality, NCAA studies have shown athletes spend more than 40 hours per week on their sport. Some players have said they have no time for jobs or summer internships.

Again, there is a mixing of issues happening here. Maybe the 20 hour rule is broken and doesn't work. Fine. How is making freshmen ineligible to play sports going to fix this?

“I think you'd be amazed at how the honor system or instinct level balances everything out,” McGlade said. “Some athletes will train whether or not they have coaches around. I think everybody is becoming much more in tune about overuse injuries as it is.”

Sure, and overuse injuries won't stop because freshmen will be treated like transfers and have to sit out a year. This particular solution doesn't fix the problem at hand. It's just a way to piss off the NBA. The NCAA basically states that in point #7, because they don't once mention academics as the reason for the change to making freshmen ineligible to participate in sports.

“The problem is the average fan simply doesn't care,” Gurney said. “They just want to be entertained and feel good about their school and keep the pretense what they're seeing out there is real students. That's nonsense.

I am under no pretense. I know they aren't real students on the basketball court. Thanks for underestimating the public though. I care about athletes getting an education, but I don't think forcing college basketball players to stay in school for two years and not even allowing them to play freshmen year is the fix. It is a way to stick it to the NBA.

That's not to say many athletes can't get a good education. Most athletes can get that. The problem with college sports is not with the women's lacrosse team or women's tennis team. The problem is football and men's basketball, and we have to come to terms with that.”

And freshmen ineligibility isn't as much of an issue with college football, because true freshmen won't be going to the NFL after one season of college football. So the reason for the proposed freshmen ineligibility rule is to prevent 10-15 student-athletes from pursuing the NBA, while using the guise of trying to provide a better education.