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The way I would clean up college basketball


IU Scott

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1) The NBA and the NCAA needs to work together to make a plan that is best for both parties.
2) The NBA get rid of the one and done rule and go to the MLB model. Let any player that wants to enter the draft to do so but if you go to college you can't get drafted until you finish 3 years of college.
3) The NCAA needs to eliminate the shoe companies involvement in summer basketball and take it over themselves.
4) Eliminate programs from having their own contracts with shoe companies. Have the NCAA have one contract that each program has to sign with one shoe company.
5) Don't allow coaches to be paid by the shoe companies and all of their salary is from the University.

To me this would eliminate where agents would be coming to college campuses trying to sign players and would eliminate agents trying to steer players to certain schools. It would eliminate shoe companies brokering deals with schools who the supply gear to as well.

Watching UW play today makes me feel that the kid Davidson is what I think college basketball is all about. It is about players playing with heart because they love the college game and trying to win for their university. I would rather watch kids like him than watch a kid like Ayton who we know is only there because he has to and not because he wants to.
 
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These are some great thoughts! I would add that there needs to be some process for approved, sanctioned agent meetings. Have players and agents operate in the shadows is also what causes a lot of these issues. Maybe a player and their family is ineligible if they meet with an agent without an NCAA representative present. 

Or there’s some kind of window each year at the beginning and end of each season where agents can meet with players, but it has to be on campus with a compliance officer from the school present and there needs to be a paper trail of all meeting communication. 

Bottom line is players need to understand the agent process and agents are going to try to contact players and families, so there’s need to be a process for making it above board. 

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7 minutes ago, BGleas said:

These are some great thoughts! I would add that there needs to be some process for approved, sanctioned agent meetings. Have players and agents operate in the shadows is also what causes a lot of these issues. Maybe a player and their family is ineligible if they meet with an agent without an NCAA representative present. 

Or there’s some kind of window each year at the beginning and end of each season where agents can meet with players, but it has to be on campus with a compliance officer from the school present and there needs to be a paper trail of all meeting communication. 

Bottom line is players need to understand the agent process and agents are going to try to contact players and families, so there’s need to be a process for making it above board. 

I love the idea of having an NCAA sanctioned agent at all meetings.  It could even be school compliance officers that have proper training, although what if it had to be a compliance officer from another school?  

Any player who violates that rule is found to be permanently and retroactively ineligible; they'd obviously never be able to play again but they'd also be risking undoing everything they'd accomplished in their entire career. Make the punishment have some real teeth. 

Also, make that agent unable to ever work with guys in this process again. If anyone signs with said agent upon completion of eligibility an investigation is automatically triggered to make sure no dialogue had taken place with him before the player was no long under NCAA jurisdiction. 

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These are all excellent ideas and long overdue. Hopefully the FBI involvement in college basketball kicks the NCAA to make real changes for the better to clean up the sport. I especially would like to see IUScotts "#2" idea and have basketball follow the baseball model.

On another note...the NCAA also needs to actually figure out a way to investigate schools in a more timely/diligent manner and actually punish schools like UNC that clearly weren't playing by the rules.

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Great topic and discussion.  As I was reading Scott's list of suggestions it hit me . . . how on earth did college basketball programs/conferences ever allow so many outside the universities get so much control over college basketball at all?  From the NBA luring kids before they are ready to shoe companies . . . really, shoe companies???  It is high time someone step up and fix this mess!

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3 minutes ago, iu2win said:

Great topic and discussion.  As I was reading Scott's list of suggestions it hit me . . . how on earth did college basketball programs/conferences ever allow so many outside the universities get so much control over college basketball at all?  From the NBA luring kids before they are ready to shoe companies . . . really, shoe companies???  It is high time someone step up and fix this mess!

One word MONEY, also the NCAA can't do anything about kids going to the NBA because they can't make the kids stay in school.

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Personally, I wouldn't mind if top-tiered programs paid their best players a healthy stipend while on campus. Graduate students in certain disciplines have their studies paid for and then get the stipend on top that more than covers most living expenses. This is done in hopes that they will produce some kind of intellectual property that the universities then reap the rewards of later if some new product/idea/process gains a new patent/becomes marketable. The only difference here is that student-athletes at top programs are helping their schools make millions of $ while they're on campus. There is no betting on if they'll bring money into the coffers. It just is. 

Also, I like some of IU Scott's ideas, namely regarding shoe company money. But I'm not sure I agree with the MLB idea. The average age of a player in MLB is almost 3 years older than the average NBA player, which indicates that players hang around that league longer, thus increasing their earning potential across the span of their careers. Plus, the two sports are just different. MLB has a much more robust minor league system that gives players better opportunities to move up to the majors. Not so much with the current "G League" or whatever it's called now. Still, I agree, something has to be done to discourage all the grifting that has seeped into CBB over the past couple of decades. 

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7 minutes ago, BEKA said:

Personally, I wouldn't mind if top-tiered programs paid their best players a healthy stipend while on campus. Graduate students in certain disciplines have their studies paid for and then get the stipend on top that more than covers most living expenses. This is done in hopes that they will produce some kind of intellectual property that the universities then reap the rewards of later if some new product/idea/process gains a new patent/becomes marketable. The only difference here is that student-athletes at top programs are helping their schools make millions of $ while they're on campus. There is no betting on if they'll bring money into the coffers. It just is. 

Also, I like some of IU Scott's ideas, namely regarding shoe company money. But I'm not sure I agree with the MLB idea. The average age of a player in MLB is almost 3 years older than the average NBA player, which indicates that players hang around that league longer, thus increasing their earning potential across the span of their careers. Plus, the two sports are just different. MLB has a much more robust minor league system that gives players better opportunities to move up to the majors. Not so much with the current "G League" or whatever it's called now. Still, I agree, something has to be done to discourage all the grifting that has seeped into CBB over the past couple of decades. 

Like I have said many times my daughter is on a full ride at IU along with other scholarships and FASFA.  These athletes has the same aid as her and she gets plenty of extra money to live on so they are not hurting for money.  Since she doesn't live in a dorm or gets the meal plan all of that money goes to her.  Before each semester she gets a healthy check that is way more than enough to live on for that semester.

Also when I say use the MLB rule I would think that most of the players who wants to go to the NBA will go so that would actually leave kids who wants to be a college athlete and not a professional player.  I would think that the players who are playing college basketball if this rule was implemented wouldn't be worried about their age going into the NBA.

 

Also you can't just pay the top basketball or football players because of title 9 which means that everything provided for those players needs to be provided for everyone.

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None of the corruption is going away. But what would be nice is if the NCAA would just consistently enforce their rules and not turn a blind eye to their big programs...like UNC. The problem is, the NCAA has little reason to enforce their rules. If the FBI wasn't investigating this, we wouldn't have heard any of it. But we all still knew/know it's going on. 

What would be huge is for the NBA to change the rules to that of the MLB, as was mentioned. What's never mentioned when people bring up the "MLB rule" is that you can go to the draft at any point out of JUCO. So maybe some kids opt more for the JUCO scene...probably not many, though. The banning of shoe company stuff is overkill and a lot of problems they cause would probably just go away. The shoe companies will be after the HS draft picks, not the kids going to college for 3 years.

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Rather than put any financial onus on the universities to pay athletes and to comply with Title IX, why not go to the Olympics model?

Let kids make money if they can market themselves. They will find out really quickly whether they have any value in the marketplace. Division 1 athletes obviously have a skill that derives revenue for the schools they play for, let them find out how the real world works by hanging their own shingles, and seeing who will pay them.

Students who are on academic scholarship are allowed to sell their skills to the private sector and make money while in school. Athletes seem to be the only group of students who cannot capitalize on their abilities while maintaining the status of a "student athlete".

 

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10 minutes ago, Jerry Lundergaard said:

Rather than put any financial onus on the universities to pay athletes and to comply with Title IX, why not go to the Olympics model?

Let kids make money if they can market themselves. They will find out really quickly whether they have any value in the marketplace. Division 1 athletes obviously have a skill that derives revenue for the schools they play for, let them find out how the real world works by hanging their own shingles, and seeing who will pay them.

Students who are on academic scholarship are allowed to sell their skills to the private sector and make money while in school. Athletes seem to be the only group of students who cannot capitalize on their abilities while maintaining the status of a "student athlete".

 

The only issue with that is there's a reason athletes aren't supposed to do that now. All the sudden coaches can start promising ad deals to players. Come to our school and I can promise an $X deal with our local car dealership, etc., etc. You think kids flock to a school like UCLA now? Imagine Alford out there promising cameos on TV shows, movies, commercials, etc., etc.

Granted this already happens to a point as we're even doing with Langford by saying it helps his brand most to come to IU, but it would uneven the playing field drastically more in terms of kids going to schools where they can get more ad dollars. 

I'm not saying I'm against this, just playing devil's advocate a bit and throwing out some of the potential aspects that would need to be thought through. 

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Just fashion the rule after the baseball and hockey rule where the kid, if he wants to go to college can sign with an agent, and if drafted gets his bonus up front. At that point, they stay in school and are taken care of financially, but cannot have contact with agents while in college I believe. I would let the agents be able to take care of incidentals, i.e. parents and family, but once the bonus is paid, hands off until they are done. I know baseball is 3 years, not sure about Hockey. I believe basketball should be 2 years, but the NBA would have to eliminate the one and done rule, and have some input probably on the time frame. Baseball you can play until 40, basketball, only the greats last that long, and not many so they would probably want it no more than 2 years. I would also let the kids who are on not signed with agents be able to make money on their jerseys, faces, etc. Some of these kids will only have college to make extra money as they won't be able to go pro, and you don't want jealousy built in, so something needs to be decided on when players likenesses are used. I think though the main problem is the large payments for players who people will go to the NBA one day. Adopt the baseball rule, but one year less.

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2 hours ago, Iuprof said:

Just fashion the rule after the baseball and hockey rule where the kid, if he wants to go to college can sign with an agent, and if drafted gets his bonus up front. At that point, they stay in school and are taken care of financially, but cannot have contact with agents while in college I believe. I would let the agents be able to take care of incidentals, i.e. parents and family, but once the bonus is paid, hands off until they are done. I know baseball is 3 years, not sure about Hockey. I believe basketball should be 2 years, but the NBA would have to eliminate the one and done rule, and have some input probably on the time frame. Baseball you can play until 40, basketball, only the greats last that long, and not many so they would probably want it no more than 2 years. I would also let the kids who are on not signed with agents be able to make money on their jerseys, faces, etc. Some of these kids will only have college to make extra money as they won't be able to go pro, and you don't want jealousy built in, so something needs to be decided on when players likenesses are used. I think though the main problem is the large payments for players who people will go to the NBA one day. Adopt the baseball rule, but one year less.

Great post, and a lot of good ideas here. I think the biggest charges for the NCAA, and they can't be done without the NBA's cooperation and involvement, are 1) Figuring out the shoe company thing, especially as it relates to AAU, etc., 2) The agent thing, allow players to speak with agents in an NCAA sanctioned and governed way and the NBA has to have strict penalties for agents found to be braking those rules, and then 3) The one and done rule needs fixing. I like your idea of the MLB model but at two years. 

The jersey royalty thing would be really tricky to figure out. Who gets credit for sales? Take a #40 IU jersey for instance. Cody Zeller made that jersey really popular and was here for two years. Say a player ranked #145 in his class came in after Zeller and wore #40 for 4 years, playing sparingly his first two years. Does that kids get royalties from #40 jersey sales, even though the vast majority of the sales are due to Zeller making the number popular?

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6 minutes ago, BGleas said:

 2) The agent thing, allow players to speak with agents in an NCAA sanctioned and governed way and the NBA has to have strict penalties for agents found to be braking those rules,

This is the easiest thing to do. I've heard people propose that a player should be able to speak to an agent all throughout college as long as the school has a compliance officer with them at said meeting. Getting the NBA on board may be a whole other thing. The NBA's lack of governance in this area as whole is killing the college game. 

If agents want face time with players...give it to them. As long as there isn't a transaction of money then who cares. Really, this rule is about as dumb as enforcing the number of text messages a coach can send a recruit. 

Although there are big whoppers in this report like the whole Arizona thing, let's remember that a lot of the alleged transactions/meetings were not steering high school kids to a specific university. Many were ASM trying to get in from of current NCAA players (at the time) to steer them toward their agency. In these cases (unless proven otherwise) I could understand why a program/coach would have no knowledge of the meetings. My point is that this in not just the 'one and done' exploiting our system - think about players like VanVleet and Justin Patton who are named in the report. They weren't even on the radar in high school, but proved themselves in college and an agent wanted to talk to them - a situation where both parties were motivated to keep this a secret from their teams. Yes, shame on them, but let's just get rid of that specific rule. 

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39 minutes ago, BGleas said:

The jersey royalty thing would be really tricky to figure out. Who gets credit for sales? Take a #40 IU jersey for instance. Cody Zeller made that jersey really popular and was here for two years. Say a player ranked #145 in his class came in after Zeller and wore #40 for 4 years, playing sparingly his first two years. Does that kids get royalties from #40 jersey sales, even though the vast majority of the sales are due to Zeller making the number popular?

There'd be a brawl for number 11. haha. 

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1 hour ago, BGleas said:

Great post, and a lot of good ideas here. I think the biggest charges for the NCAA, and they can't be done without the NBA's cooperation and involvement, are 1) Figuring out the shoe company thing, especially as it relates to AAU, etc., 2) The agent thing, allow players to speak with agents in an NCAA sanctioned and governed way and the NBA has to have strict penalties for agents found to be braking those rules, and then 3) The one and done rule needs fixing. I like your idea of the MLB model but at two years. 

The jersey royalty thing would be really tricky to figure out. Who gets credit for sales? Take a #40 IU jersey for instance. Cody Zeller made that jersey really popular and was here for two years. Say a player ranked #145 in his class came in after Zeller and wore #40 for 4 years, playing sparingly his first two years. Does that kids get royalties from #40 jersey sales, even though the vast majority of the sales are due to Zeller making the number popular?

Calbert Cheaney should get some royalties for #40 if they go that route.

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2 hours ago, BGleas said:

Great post, and a lot of good ideas here. I think the biggest charges for the NCAA, and they can't be done without the NBA's cooperation and involvement, are 1) Figuring out the shoe company thing, especially as it relates to AAU, etc., 2) The agent thing, allow players to speak with agents in an NCAA sanctioned and governed way and the NBA has to have strict penalties for agents found to be braking those rules, and then 3) The one and done rule needs fixing. I like your idea of the MLB model but at two years. 

The jersey royalty thing would be really tricky to figure out. Who gets credit for sales? Take a #40 IU jersey for instance. Cody Zeller made that jersey really popular and was here for two years. Say a player ranked #145 in his class came in after Zeller and wore #40 for 4 years, playing sparingly his first two years. Does that kids get royalties from #40 jersey sales, even though the vast majority of the sales are due to Zeller making the number popular?

Royalties should not be part of the issue. Kid can make whatever he can off "his brand" while he is an active, scholarship player. Once he leaves, goes to the next wearer of said number.

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5 hours ago, Iuprof said:

Just fashion the rule after the baseball and hockey rule where the kid, if he wants to go to college can sign with an agent, and if drafted gets his bonus up front. At that point, they stay in school and are taken care of financially, but cannot have contact with agents while in college I believe. I would let the agents be able to take care of incidentals, i.e. parents and family, but once the bonus is paid, hands off until they are done. I know baseball is 3 years, not sure about Hockey. I believe basketball should be 2 years, but the NBA would have to eliminate the one and done rule, and have some input probably on the time frame. Baseball you can play until 40, basketball, only the greats last that long, and not many so they would probably want it no more than 2 years. I would also let the kids who are on not signed with agents be able to make money on their jerseys, faces, etc. Some of these kids will only have college to make extra money as they won't be able to go pro, and you don't want jealousy built in, so something needs to be decided on when players likenesses are used. I think though the main problem is the large payments for players who people will go to the NBA one day. Adopt the baseball rule, but one year less.

You can't allow college athletes to make money off their likeness. Here's why...

Let's say we allow players to take a percentage of their jersey sales. Pretend you are a multi-millionaire, you donate a lot of money to the program, school, season ticket holder, etc. If you really wanted Romeo, why wouldn't you just say "Hey, I'll buy 10k Romeo Langford jerseys." This is just a "legal" way of paying for recruits.

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