College Education: Hold the Mayo

This first appeared at

 Here is an interesting article from the New York Times about O.J. Mayo, the “freshman” basketball talent at the University of Southern California. The article argues against the absurd age eligibility rule of the NBA enacted with an eye and ear toward what David Stern admits was the mutual back scratching interests of the NBA and the NCAA.

The beauty of the Rule, as revealed in the case of Mayo, is that it makes transparent the hypocrisy of big time college basketball. The requirement of one year of college, “one and done,” compels players, often from poor backgrounds, who are otherwise eligible to earn a living doing what they do best, to enroll in an institution of higher learning for one and a half semesters until their team exits the NCAA tournament. No less an ethicist than Bobby Knight has said, the rule is “the worst thing that’s happened to college basketball since I’ve been coaching.”

Unlike the NFL in the Clarett case, the NBA could not with a straight face argue that the purpose of the rule is to further the education of young athletes and to prepare them for life after a pro career. (Not that anyone believed the NFL in Clarett.) Instead, the purpose of the NBA’s rule is strikingly clear: it gives their scouts a full year of adequate competition to be able to judge the potential of the talent working for free on the farm.

Alan Milstein