One things is clear, one-and-done rule doesn't work -- time for players and owners to change rule

You may or may not have noticed this but the deadline for underclassmen to declare themselves eligible for the NBA draft was Sunday. The list of players who put their names into the draft was officially released yesterday.

There were 61 names.

There are two rounds in the draft. A total of 60 players will be drafted. I understand that some players will withdraw between now and May 8th when they find out they aren’t going in the first round—where the money is guaranteed—or that they may not be drafted at all. But most of the big-name players whose names are on the list will stay on the list. And quite a few players will leave their names in, not get drafted and then begin nomadic lives that may take them overseas; may take them to the NBA’s Development League and, in a few cases, will land them in the NBA.

I will grant you that this year is not a good one to use as an example because some players have been convinced by agents that they MUST get into this June’s draft because a player strike or lockout is a virtual certainty in the summer of 2011. Even so, I have reached a conclusion that isn’t based solely on the number of underclassmen who have put their names into the pool, but was crystallized when I read the list yesterday morning: The one-and-done rule doesn’t work. It has to go.

I say that not for the reason that some people do: that it makes a mockery of the term, ‘student-athlete.’ That shipped sailed so many years ago that I’m not sure Columbus had learned to sail yet. In fact, in some ways the one-and-done has cut DOWN on the hypocrisy. Now, when someone who is clearly in college only because the rules say he must be there for a year, doesn’t go to class and makes little or no attempt to even stay eligible in his second semester, there’s no faking involved.

Years ago, the work that went into keeping players eligible for three or four years often involved things like having others take tests and write papers for them; getting grades changed and sometimes sending them to bogus summer school classes so they could keep playing—among other things. With one-and-done, it’s a whole lot neater because you don’t have to keep someone afloat academically for more than a semester. Sure, there’s still cheating going on, but less of it involves the very best players.

They’re in, they’re out and then they’re replaced by the next group. John Calipari won 35 games at Kentucky this season with four freshmen whose names are in the draft pool. He’s gone out and signed a brand new crop, most of whom will probably be in next year’s draft pool after Kentucky wins another 30+ games next season. If you don’t like it, don’t blame Calipari. He didn’t make the rules, he just taking full advantage of them. He’s well worth the $4 million a year Kentucky is paying him. My only request is that he not use the term, ‘student-athlete,’ when talking about his players.

Here’s why I initially thought one-and-done was a good idea: In my own naïve way, I believed it was better for kids to be exposed to college for a year, regardless of how many classes they actually took part in. I thought it was better for them to spend a year on a campus as opposed to a year on charter airplanes. I thought exposing them to other teen-age kids was better than exposing them to 30-year-olds who had been bouncing around basketball for 10 years or more.

I still think that’s all true. But I don’t think this is the way to do it. The NBA and the players’ union—remember these are NBA rules, not NCAA rules—need to fish or cut bait in the next collective bargaining agreement. The old CBA has one year left. Sadly, getting this done appears not to be a priority. NBA commissioner David Stern has been pleading owner poverty since the All-Star Break and, naturally, the players don’t want to hear it. So, a money war—which may or may not lead to a work stoppage; my bet is it won’t—is going to break out. The issue of when a player may try to enter the NBA is likely to be an afterthought.

It shouldn’t be, especially for the union, which is supposed to protect basketball players--past, present and future. Basketball needs to put in the same rule that currently exist in baseball: When a player graduates from high school he can put his name into the draft. If he is drafted he can sign with the team that drafts him or he can go to college. If he DOES go to college though, he can’t go back into the draft for three years.

What that does—especially in a two-round draft—is ensure that an NBA team must REALLY want a player to draft him. It should be the player’s option to choose between the NBA and college rather than forcing players to commit to the draft without knowing whether they will be drafted or not. If, however, he makes the decision to go to college, he can’t jump back in the pool again after one year. He has to stay in college and has to pass enough courses to stay eligible through his junior year.

Will there be some fraud involved in keeping some players eligible? Sure. No system is ever going to be perfect. In many cases though, players will at least be somewhere close to a degree if they leave after three years or if they stay for four. What’s more, they will have a much better idea of their real NBA potential after three years in college. Some will find out they weren’t quite as good as they thought they were in college and might even understand that they NEED a degree.

What’s more, it will put a stop to colleges being revolving doors, one-year way stations en route to the NBA. If a player is good enough to be drafted coming out of high school and that’s his dream, why delay it for one year of college he will see only as a burden? In the case of the occasional kid who really wants to continue his education after turning pro, no one will stop him from enrolling in summer school classes and he’ll certainly be able to afford to pay his own way. In most cases, the kids will end up in college and, like their brethren in football and baseball, will stay at least three years. In 95 percent of cases, that will be a good thing. And, if the players and owners sign off on that sort of rule, it will almost certainly stand up to any court challenge.

I thought one-and-done was a step forward when the rule was passed. It was, in fact, a step sideways. It is time for the players and owners to put an end to the current charade and at least attempt to take a step forward.

*****

A couple of notes based on posts and e-mails from yesterday: A few people asked if The Big Ten’s money per school would go down if it went from 11 to 16 teams. Probably not because the revenues would go up so much: More schools will mean more people paying for The Big Ten Network; more ad revenues; more cable systems taking on The Big Ten Network; a more lucrative national TV contract. It will mean The Big Ten can hold a championship game if it so desires. All that will probably double the gross revenues, which will almost certainly mean more than $22 million net per school each year.

As for Notre Dame, it makes far more than that on football each year between NBC, the BCS—remember it doesn’t have to split any BCS or bowl revenue it makes with other conference members--and neutral site games. Plus, it can control its schedule so that if Brian Kelly is even a decent coach it is almost impossible not to win at least nine games a year.

And finally on the Anna Kournikova-Natalie Gulbis comparison: If anything I was being hard on Kournikova, kind to Gulbis. Yes, Gulbis has won an LPGA event, but Kournikova was a Wimbledon semifinalist who was ranked in the top ten on a number of occasions. If Gulbis goes on and wins a major, I’ll change my assessment. As of now, I think the comparison is more than fair.

Lorena Ochoa's retirement; Conference expansion – he who has the checkbook has the power

Here’s the first question of the day: Is the NFL draft over yet? The answer, if you include the endless analysis that goes on in every city, is no. Here in Washington you would think the Redskins decision to (finally) draft an offensive tackle was roughly as brilliant as the founders decision to ask Thomas Jefferson to write The Declaration of Independence.

Let’s face it: in April everyone has had a good draft—even the Raiders. Check back in October and things will look a bit less rosy in a few places. Of course by then ESPN’s draft experts will be telling us who is going to go in the first round of NEXT year’s draft. Talk about the circle of life.

Moving on to far more interesting topics. The biggest news of the past few days actually involved golf—but not Tiger Woods or even Phil Mickelson. It involved Lorena Ochoa, who has decided to retire from golf—apparently to start a family—at the age of 28. This is NOT good news for the LPGA; to put it mildly.

The last few years have not gone very well for women’s golf. Some of the issues have been completely out of control of the people in the game: Annika Sorenstam retired, the economy tanked and Michelle Wie, even though she made great strides last year, still has not become the breakthrough star people thought she was going to be when she showed up as a prodigy at the age of 13.

Unfortunately those events happened, for the most part, while Carolyn Bivens was the LPGA’s commissioner. Bivens was to being a commissioner what Dan Snyder has been to owning a football team: she did everything wrong and then tried to blame everyone else. She had lousy relationships with her players, her sponsors and with the media. She tried to make English the official language of the LPGA Tour—speak it or be gone. Other than that, she did fine. She was finally fired by the players last summer but the damage had been done. Tournaments were going under left and right and, even though Ochoa had emerged as a superstar and a number of young players had flashed potential, interest in the LPGA was tanking.

The tour has since hired Michael Whan, who is young and eager and seems to want to rebuild some of the bridges blown up by Bivens. But the key for any commissioner is having a product the public cares about and the best way for any sport to do that is through great rivalries. Maybe Wie or Morgan Pressel or Paula Creamer or Brittany Lincicome (sadly, Natalie Gulbis does not appear to have the game to be much more than golf’s version of Anna Kournikova—a reasonably good player who is a star because of her looks) might have emerged as Ochoa’s great rival.

Now, that’s not going to happen. Does it help, by the way, for at least one of the world’s best players to be an American—yes. That’s not me being Bivens and demanding that everyone on earth learn to speak English, that’s a fact of life in sports. When there was a lull in great American male tennis players between John McEnroe/Jimmy Connors and the emergence of Pete Sampras/Andre Agassi/Jim Courier, Ivan Lendl, among others said bluntly: “We need an American star. We need American television ratings and corporations and American stars drive those things.”

The same is true in golf—men or women. When Tom Watson began to fade as a star and neither Phil Mickelson nor Tiger Woods had arrived yet, golf ratings went down. Greg Norman helped because he was ‘Americanized,’ if not American but Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros as the world’s best players didn’t drive ratings.

Neither Sorenstam nor Ochoa is American, but Sorenstam had lived here for a long time and Ochoa is from close to here and has a unique sort of charm that bridges borders. Still, a rivalry between her and one of the Americans would have been terrific for the sport. Now, unless she has a baby, gets bored and makes a comeback at 30 or 31 (certainly possible) it won’t happen.

What’s sad is we may never see the best of Ochoa. Sorenstam didn’t become dominant until she was 30. She had won two majors—the same number as Ochoa—prior to turning 30 and 23 tournaments. After 30 she won eight more majors and 49 (!!!) more tournaments. She became a star who transcended her sport, which was—needless to say—good for the women’s game. There was never more focus on women’s golf than in 2003 when she played against the men at Colonial. The only bad thing about that week was it put the idea that you could make more money by playing against the men into the heads of Wie and her handlers and led to her multiple ill-fated attempts to play against the men BEFORE she had even won a tournament playing against women.

The other story of last week was the growing drumbeat on the issue of conference expansion in the NCAA. There have been almost as many meaningless words spoken and written on this subject as on the NFL draft. Here’s the deal: The Big Ten—unfortunately—holds all the cards here because of the success of The Big Ten TV network.

That means Jim Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, is wielding most of the power and influence right now. I can tell you two things about Delany: he’s smart and he’s ruthless. He could care less about anything other than what’s best for him—and, thus, his conference—which makes him a very good commissioner if not someone you would want to trust to tell you where the sun will rise tomorrow.

A lot of people sneered when he started The Big Ten network but it has, for all intents and purposes, made him the unofficial commissioner of college athletics. Why? Because the success of the network means that every Big Ten team takes home a check for $22 million at the end of every football season. No one else is making half of that, except for the SEC—which is the one conference Delany hasn’t talked (privately, he never says anything that has any meaning in public) about raiding.

Now, if the college presidents cared anything about doing the right thing, conference expansion wouldn’t even be an issue right now. There are already too many conferences that are too big because of the constant money grab going on. Sixteen Big East basketball teams? Twelve ACC football teams? That’s good for competition, for rivalries, for fans? There are Big East teams that don’t visit another Big East home court for two or three years at a time. Round-robin play, the fairest way to decide a championship in basketball? Gone from all the major conferences except the Pac-10. Every team playing every league team in football? Gone—except in The Big East, which is fighting for survival.

Now, Delany may want to make The Big Ten into The Big Sixteen. He may try to entice schools like Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, West Virginia (all Big East) and Missouri into his league. He’d love to add Notre Dame—which will NEVER give up its exclusive TV money from NBC—or Texas. If Delany goes on a raiding mission, the leagues raided have to try to raid themselves in order to survive. Why would someone like Syracuse leave The Big East? Again, do the math: $22 million vs. $7 million. Those numbers will trump tradition is any college president’s office any day. The same is true of the other candidates for expansion.

All of this, frankly, sucks. It is also bound to happen. Because he who has the checkbook has the power. And right now, unfortunately for college athletics, no one has a bigger checkbook than Jim Delany.