The freshmen can wait

By Tyler Dixon

The young guns rule college basketball; the players’ that are too young to even consider when their graduation date might be.

That is, if they ever reach their graduation. A rule should be in place that players have to spend two years in college before they enter the NBA Draft.

It was asked in this weeks Weekly Bark if there should be a rule in place requiring college basketball players to stay longer than the current rule. The current rule is players must be removed from high school for one year before they can enter the NBA Draft. Detroit Pistons guard Brandon Jennings played in Italy before being drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2009.

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This year’s NCAA Tournament was ruled by freshmen…or so was the plan. Only two prominent freshmen remain in Kentucky’s Julius Randle and Arizona’s Aaron Gordon. Arizona has a great chance to make a run to the Final Four while Kentucky will battle the University of Louisville in the battle for the commonwealth in Indianapolis Friday. Duke’s standout freshman Jabari Parker was sent back to Durham early by Mercer University and Kansas’ run was …cut short.

March Madness is the best time of the year but wouldn’t it be better if each team had the best players to represent it. Yes, I am a Kentucky fan and the thought of the players we have lost the last few seasons on a roster makes me giggle but I digress.

Sports reporter Tyler Davis wrote an opinion piece earlier this week, he said if players are good enough to go to the NBA then they should be able to go to the NBA. I agree that if players are good enough then they should play in the NBA but why not wait one more year to get skills they can use after basketball. College is not only about playing sports, it’s about giving these athletes the skills they need to survive and not end up as another statistic. Former NBA player Antoine Walker, according to Yahoo Sports, lost more than $110 million from his playing career although he did attend college, maybe he didn’t have the skills to keep his money situation squared away.

As I have written this column, two freshmen have already declared for the draft. Kansas’ Joel Embiid and Syracuse’s Tyler Ennis decided to forgo their final three years of eligibility to go make millions. Embiid will be a top five pick while Ennis could be a first rounder if a team needs a point guard.

According to one Bleacher Report article, (this is not an endorsement for Bleacher Report; some of their articles are insane) one mock draft has six of the top seven picks being freshmen.

Yes, a lot of great players are freshmen and one argument could be if they stayed for the entire four years that they could already be past their prime but that’s ridiculous. Vince Carter is still playing basketball and he started dunking when he was a toddler…this isn’t true but it is pretty close.

I await the day when college players will be forced to stay at least two years in college and I hope it comes sooner rather than later.

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Tyler Dixon can be reached at [email protected] or @tdixon_de on Twitter. 

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