Changes have taken the bounce out of college basketball

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This backboard gets broken by a Texas Tech basketball player. While the college basketball game isn’t completely broken, there are those who believe it is in need of repair. | Doug Mills, Associated Press

“They’re going to have to change something. It’s gotten out of hand …” — Jeff Judkins, former University of Utah All-American, former NBA player, former Utah assistant coach, former BYU women’s head coach

College sports is a mess. Everyone knows this — coaches, players, fans, school presidents, conference presidents — and everyone complains about it, but no one does anything to fix it.

It’s not like we’re trying to cure cancer or create cold fusion here. There are solutions to the problems created by the run-amok transfer portal and NIL, which together allow athletes to transfer repeatedly, often simply going to the highest NIL bidder, without penalty. Not even the pros have such freedom of movement.

The problem is compounded in basketball by the one-and-done players — those who play one year and then enter the NBA draft.

According to The Associated Press, since 2006, NBA lottery picks have been used to select 107 one-and-done players (those who played only one year of college ball). In the first round of the 2023 draft, 15 of the 30 picks were used to select one-and-dones. It’s bad for the NBA (for player development) and bad for the college game (the NBA’s free farm system, or at least it was).

Let’s start here: College sports is a professional league, like the NFL, and the players are professional athletes, so let’s end the pretense, abandon the fake and outdated “student-athlete” concept and proceed accordingly.

Let’s ask Jeff Judkins, who has broad experiences as a college and pro athlete and as a college assistant coach and head coach, what he would do to fix college sports.

Judkins:

“Allow a coach to protect seven players. If one of those kids wants to transfer, he can do it, but now he has to sit out a year. The smaller schools and…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/changes-taken-bounce-college-basketball-172114236.html

Author : Deseret News

Publish date : 2024-12-26 17:21:00

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