Does the college game matter anymore?

  • Banned

    Does the college game matter anymore to the NBA? Should the College game change it’s strategy? It seems the college game has been down the last few years. What has changed? Is the OAD hurting the college game?

    College fans are different than NBA fans. They believe once a player is apart of the school they root for, then they are always apart of that school. Yet are OAD’s really apart of that schools history and tradition? Will Kentucky fans really remember all the OAD’s they’ve had? or Duke, or KU? NBA fans more geared for the profession side of things believe it’s all about the team. A player comes or goes it doesn’t matter. It’s what have you done for me lately. College fans are more inclined to stick with their players. If a player has a bad year they believe and say wait till next year.

    The OAD era has had an effect on the college game. Good or bad it’s has changed how schools recruit and how the game is played. Coach Cal just said, “recently it wasn’t about winning the championship but getting 8 players drafted into the NBA”. Now I know some of you will say what a cop out. Yet is it really? In so many ways he is right. The more kids you get drafted the more talent that comes your way.

    I don’t want to speak for those that are gifted enough to play the college game, and then go pro after one year. Yet the writing is on the wall it’s not about the education, school, or it’s fans. Sadly it’s really not. It’s about money, and exposure. You know playing on national televised tv every night.

    Think about it does it really matter what a kid does in the college game anymore? These kids are already drafted to the NBA even before they pick a college to go to. It doesn’t matter what they do in their lone college season. They’re still getting drafted. All college does is give the NBA another year to decide where these kids will be drafted. I know there is always exceptions to rule, but you know I’m right.

    I think the college game needs to get back to the basics. Recruit to your needs and if one of them is a OAD then so be it. Just don’t recruit to get all the talent you can when it doesn’t fit what your system is and what your trying to do. It’s all right to tell a OAD your not interested. They’ll be alright. After all they have like 12 schools on their list. (shaking my head) Besides if you do what you do and recruit to what you do. You have a better chance of winning a NC than sending out a bunch of talented freshman.

    Just my two cents.

  • @DoubleDD

    Thought provoking and an arrow in the heart.

    I believe all worthwhile human activities go through good times and bad. During the bad times, it can look pretty bad, as if things cannot be turned around. This is especially true with our republic, but also with a sport like college hoops. I have learned never to give up on either. Either can be wrecked and fall into the ash bin of history at any time. What prevents it is the goodness of the people involved. Do they believe and step up with 5 minutes to go and make a difference? It takes a lot of them stepping up when the going gets tough. They don’t all get rewarded either. Sometimes it even looks like they fail, when in fact, they have stemmed the tide, so that others can carry on and get the credit later. College ball may matter more now than ever before, but it is being redefined during a very bad time in USA–a half century of cheap foreign goods and economic decline from massively subsidized investment abroad and too little at home. We export security and import most everything else. This is why all the economic predators at home and abroad are circling sports and the greatest game ever invented like sharks. Sport, especially college hoops, is one of the few domestic sectors getting enough public and private investment/subsidy aimed at growing and developing a domestic product to flourish. So the money whores for private oligarchy are being unleashed on it to steal it and leave a carcass same as was done to USA, when it was flush after WWII. But it’s the people great and small making millions of small and large choices that save the republic and the college game another day from the ash bin. It’s not how far you fall, it’s how high you bounce that tells the story’s outcome. Persons like you searching and coming up with a vision of what might be done must come before our leaders can act on it. They can only develop what beliefs and vision are in the people that care for and love the game and the republic. It is painful and often behind the curve for one’s lifetime, but if you love and believe it, they will develop it sooner or later, as surely as the Sharks will come, when there is nothing better to eat elsewhere. Rock Chalk!

  • @DoubleDD

    Good post. Yes… all the blue blood programs will remember their OADs as long as they do well at the next level. Schools like Kentucky like to boast about how many players they have in the all-star game, etc. That is how these guys are remembered.

    Close to home… how will we remember Kelly Oubre? I think he scored something like 333 points as a Jayhawk. Hardly enough points to build a highlight reel on. I’m not criticizing Kelly. He is following the advise of counsel, agents, sports gurus “in the know.”

    I think as long as one school doesn’t OWN college basketball, it will remain a hugely followed game. For a while (and still) I worry about teams like Kentucky being able to gobble up squadrons of footers to mash everyone and run the table for many years to come. That is the type of stuff that turns me off to college ball. Even if it was Kansas doing it.

    I want to see competition… and for the most part, for games to be competitive you need players of a similar quality facing off against each other.

    Moving forward, I see “stacking” as the major issue in college ball… more so than players just visiting college for a few months in route to the league.

    I usually support the underdogs (unless playing KU) because I know they had to fight for everything they got!

  • The college game will always matter because the reach is different.

    The NBA will never expand to more than 34 or 36 markets total. This means that a quality pro game won’t necessarily always be in your area. However, a quality college game is probably within 100 miles of just about anyone. That means that most anyone can get to a good college game without hardship.

    However, the NBA is more popular than ever because there are so many incredible players in the league right now - not just Lebron and Curry, but Griffin, Paul, Rose, Butler, Leonard, Thompson, Harden, Durant, Westbrook, etc. Not only that, but so many fun teams to follow - Cavs, Warriors, Hawks, Bulls, Rockets, Clippers, Spurs - as well as up and coming teams like the Suns, Bucks, Wolves, Wizards and Pelicans.

    The NBA is in the best shape its been in since probably the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. Lots of stars, lots of interesting teams. The internet and NBATV have made it easier to consume. I ran into some people the other day that live in an area without an NBA team that watch 2 or 3 non national broadcast games a week through web streaming. That has changed things because you can follow a team that you find interesting even if they aren’t on national TV.

    @drgnslayr mentions an interesting thing about competition. The trouble with college basketball is that because there are so many D1 teams (over 350), the talent drop off from the top 30 players in college basketball to the next 100 or so, to the next 250, to the next 1000 is significant. But the thing is, that doesn’t even cover all of the starters for every school in D1.

    Even without stacks at the top (i.e. UK or Duke landing 8 or 9 McD AA players), KU itself has a stack in comparison to most any school. There isn’t a single player on KU’s roster that wouldn’t have ranked in the top 200 of his high school recruiting class. There are probably 200 D1 schools that don’t have a single player that would have ranked in the top 200 of their recruiting class. That’s an enormous talent gap just because of the number of players required for college ball. There’s nothing anyone can do to cover up that gap. It’s always going to be there and it will always be that big, which hurts competitiveness.

  • @justanotherfan

    I agree, The NBA is probably in the best shape it has been since the Bird-Magic-Kareem-Jordan glory days.

    While I agree that there is a drop in quality as you go down in rankings, you also have to consider that there is a lot more parity now than ever before. On a given day, just about any team in the top 50 can beat another team in the top 50; 40-50 years ago (UCLA glory days) there were a handful of schools every year that were head and shoulder better that the rest, fortunately that is no longer the case and as you indicated, you can find quality teams all over.

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