Freshman Ineligibility

High profile commissioners from the Big Ten, Pac 12, the ACC and Big 12 conferences are openly talking about turning back the clock in an attempt to put the college back into college athletics.

For the first time since 1972, Jim Delany, Larry Scott, John Swofford and Bob Bowlsby are reportedly lobbying for support from its member institutions to begin “a national discussion” about ruling freshmen ineligible for football and men’s basketball.

They are calling it “The Year of Readiness” and, in a best case scenario, it could be seen as an attempt to help athletes in the two biggest revenue sports adjust to life in college and improve graduation success rates in the two sports that finished last in that category in both the 2004 to 2008 and the 2009 to 2013 cycles.

“What I like about the concept is that it puts right up front the basic issue– are we basically a quasi-professional activiity or primarily an educational activity,” Maryland president Wallace Loh said in an interview with the Diamondback, the school’s student newspaper. :”If you support it you are saying very clearly the No. 1 priority is the education of the student.”

This should play well among the academic community, which has constantly complained about the graduation rates in both football and men’s basketball and would like nothing better than to turn college athletics into an Ivy League where freshmen are restricted to the classroom for a year and are not allowed on the playing fields.

It all sounds a bit Pollyanna. College athletics has become a big business.

Most of the elite players in both sports are going to declare early for the NFL and NBA drafts and will use college sports as a marketing tool for their professional careers, no matter what happens.

There is little question FBS college football and basketball would both struggle if the NCAA maintains current scholarship limitations of 85 for football and 13 for basketball and eliminates roughly 20 percent of the available eligible players. The level of play would suffer and, as good friend Marty Cohen from 247 Sports points out, it would become difficult to keep the two major sports as competitive and profitable as they are now. If all freshmen were ineligible and there were multiple injuries in either sport, it might be impossible for schools to have enough players for practice, let alone field a team.

Additional scholarships could be one solution.

Ohio State coach Urban Meyer has already talked about a desire for more scholarships beyond the current limit of 85 to deal with the longer season and playoffs. If freshmen couldn’t play, how much would scholarships need to increase by? 25? How would an increase affect Title IX and other sports?

If the proposal goes through, many top football players would probably end up red-shirting during their freshman year, the way they do now. As for basketball, freshman team games could exist in basketball, but those would then be an extra set of expenses for schools, even if they were scheduled as the preliminary part of existing game weekends.

Additional scholarships cost money and could further cripple the expenditures of athletics departments, which are already going to take a hit if they choose to join the Power 5 conferences in offering full cost of attendance to scholarship athletes that could run between $2,000 and $5,000 per student, depending on the campus.

An NCAA study on Division I athletic department budgets released in April, 2014 indicated a total of only 20 athletic programs in the FBS reported positive net cash revenues in the 2013 fiscal year. Only two sports were profitable at FBS schools, the report said. Football programs netted a median profit of slightly more than $3 million and men’s basketball netted a median $340,000. But the profits at most schools vanished after playing for a long list of other intercollegiate teams, all of which lose money. The median loss among athletic departments was $11.6 million.

The Power 5 conferences, which make the lion’s share of revenues from the new FBS four- team national football playoff, could take the hit. But the rest of Division I could drown in a sea of red ink and wind up turning more non-revenue sports into club teams.

If the Power 5 conferences get behind this proposal, it could gain momentum. But if by any wild chance it passes, there will most certainly be litigation aimed at allowing elite 18-and 19-year-old athletes, particularly in basketball, who have the ability to contribute to their schools immediately from participating in varsity sports and pursuing a professional career.

College freshmen in football rarely have the the same impact the way first-year players have in college basketball. The NFL makes prospects spend three years in college before they can declare for the draft. The NBA and its Players Association instituted a rule in 2006 that prevented high school players from immediately declaring for the draft. As it stands, a player must be 19 years old or one year removed from his high school graduation before he can declare for the NBA draft and can start picking up a paycheck.

Conspiracy theorists are already framing this as a subtle attempt by administrators to create parity in college basketball by targeting schools like Kentucky and painting all one-and-dones as mercenaries with little or no interest in the educational process. “it would make sure freshman have time to make ties, socially adapt and academically be going to classes and obtaining appropriate grades to stay eligible,” Scott said in an interview with CBS Sportsline this week. “Right now the notion of one-and-done is an exaggeration– it’s less than one-and-done. The student athletes going to be the NBA for the draft are not competing their second semesters.”

Freshmen are currerntly dominating the college game. Center Jahlil Okafor and forward Jabari Parker of Duke, guard John Wall and center Anthony Davis of Kentucky, center Kevin Love of UCLA, forward Kevin Durant of Texas, forward Michael Beasley of Kansas State and guard Derrick Rose of Memphis have all taken center stage in recent seasons. Since 2010, every first pick overall– Wall, guard Kyrie Irving of Duke, Davis, forward Anthony Bennett of UNLV and guard Andrew Wiggins of Kansas– have been a freshman. Even Duke Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski, who never had a player leave early until 1999, has seen the future. Coach K has gotten heavily involved in the one-and-done sweepstakes this season, signing three — Okafor, forward Justice Winslow and point guard Tyus Jones, who could all be lottery picks on a potential Final Four team.

If this rule is instituted, it could lead to any future lottery picks skipping college altogether and signing to pay a year in the NBA Development League if it increases salaries to more than $100,000 or do what 6-5 point guard Emmanual Mudiay did this year when he signed a one-year deal to play in China for $1 million.

Mudiay most likely will be the second pick in the draft behind the 6-10 Okafor, the dominant low post player in the ACC. In fact, the first seven picks in this year’s draft should be freshmen.

Last year, 75 players filed for early entry to the NBA draft. The top five picks were all freshmen.

“Is freshman ineligibility the best decision for these kids?” Calipari said in a recent press conference. “Or are we worried about individual programs? Bill Gates leaves to go start a company, he’s fine. That kid’s a genius and I’m happy for him. But if a player leaves early for the pros, this guy is ruining our college. What? I don’t get it.”

I agree with Calipari on this one. Who are these Power conferences to deny these kids the pursuit of their version of the American dream.?