By: AJG

AJG
Thu, 09 Apr 2015 21:38:52 +0000

Your biggest problem is upsets in the tournament? Spare me. 2008 was the only year where all four 1 seeds made the Final Four and it was probably the best one ever.

Anyways. As other commenters pointed out, this isn’t an NCAA issue. It’s an NBA issue. However, OADs are a glaring problem in college basketball. I’m not sure that it’s diluted the product, but it is, as you said, an unflattering product.

The poster above said OADs make up .5% of all players in D1 basketball. Ok. There’s 350 D1 teams. Next… Less than 100 are relevant (debatable), and there are only about 20 that fans really really care about (I’m sorry, as someone who went to a B-Ball school, OSU is not one). So really OADs go to about 10 schools. Satisfied? What’s the percentage now?

It’s not that OADs are ruining the game. It’s that they don’t care about the schools they play for. For alumni, this is the most glaring issue. Moreover, schools and coaches that get OADs compromise the academic integrity of their school. Duke is easily the most egregious violator of this aspect. Duke has an admissions rate of 10%, is ranked as the 7th best school in America, yet within the last few years kids from Simeon Vocational School in Chicago are getting full rides? That’s a problem. When kids work their entire lives to get into schools like Duke and get passed over for Jabari Parker because their SAT scores were just a few points too low, that is a problem. Again, like the commenter above alluded to, people have this impression that Calipari is such a scumbag, but what about guys like Coach K? He gets a pass because everyone thinks he’s such a class act. The difference is public perception. I honestly think Cal has cleaned up his image about as well as anyone possibly could At least with Cal you know what you’re getting. To me, Coach K is the scumbag. You mean to tell me coaching team USA has’ done anything for Duke? Really? Just like you’re players are all scholars, right?

College basketball as at quite the crossroads. There is no one solution to this problem, but I think we can all agree there is a problem. And it needs to be fixed soon.