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Here is Mitch Daniels opinion piece in WaPo today...

Jack_Ripper

Jack_Ripper

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Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinions
Dear Condoleezza Rice: Good luck fixing the cesspool that is the NCAA



Mitch Daniels February 1 at 4:20 PM




Dear Condi,

That invitation to speak on our campus still stands, but I see that you’ll be a little too busy this spring, now that you’ve accepted yet another “service opportunity” as chair of the new commission tasked by the NCAA to help it reform college basketball. You’ve always been a sucker for a good cause; and if ever a cause qualified, this one does.

When the FBI revealed its findings about the corrupt connections among shoe companies, agents, a few big-time college programs and coaches, and the Amateur Athletic Union or AAU (the first “A” increasingly looks like a misnomer), no one near the sport was shocked. The existence of this part of the cesspool has been in plain view for years. Those in a position to stop the scandals spawned by the “one-and-done” era — in which many top-tier players were required to enroll in college for one year before bolting for the NBA — have been either powerless to do so or actively interested in perpetuating the status quo.


When it was discovered that, at what we’ve always considered an academically admirable school, championships had been won by teams loaded with players who took completely phony classes, most of us were sincerely shocked. We were stunned again when, after years of cogitation, the NCAA delivered a penalty of . . . nothing. It was a final confession of futility, confirming the necessity of this special commission, if any meaningful change is going to happen from the collegiate end.

If the NCAA is impotent to stop the abuses, the NBA is all but an unindicted co-conspirator. The current arrangement works out beautifully for the league: It gets a free minor league player development system, a massively televised showcase for its next round of stars, and one less argument with a players union that prefers to limit, through its ineligible-until-age-19 rule, the number of competitors for the few hundred NBA roster spots. The league has every incentive to keep dragging its feet, so the most promising avenue for reform is to make the college game inhospitable to NBA exploitation and the rotten collusion that the one-and-done world fosters.

As for solutions, one can start by observing that almost no change could make things worse. I don’t pretend to know the single best answer, but it’s not hard to list a number of possibilities.

We could require a “year of readiness,” meaning that freshmen could practice but not play while they became acclimated to college life. This was the NCAA rule for many decades, and it makes great sense unless a “student” really has no intention of pursuing a real education.

Or the NCAA could simply use the rule already in effect for baseball, which gives young aspirants a choice between going professional straight from high school or entering college and staying a minimum of three years. Either of these approaches separates those seriously interested in higher education from those forced by the current system to pretend they are.

Another idea would be to allow players to depart early for the NBA, but the scholarships they received would be required to remain vacant for the balance of their four-year terms. Coaches who want to chase that next championship with full-time players masquerading as students could do so, but the following few seasons might be tough with rosters filled with walk-ons.

I’m convinced the college game would be more, not less popular, if a handful of would-be pretend students, whose names fans barely get a chance to know, instead went straight from high school to some sort of professional league. Doing so would certainly bring more parity and fairness to the college game. The play would still be amazingly athletic — most of us fans would not be able to tell the difference — and schools with genuine academic and conduct standards would no longer be at such a competitive disadvantage.


It’s startling how concentrated the phenomenon is. In the past five years, 45 percent of all “five-star” recruits, and 58 percent of all one-and-dones, have gone to just five schools. Our entire 14-member Big Ten conference, by contrast, has had 9.2 percent of the first category and 6.4 percent of the latter, collectively. One could tell conferences like ours that if we don’t like today’s situation, we can just establish our own rules, but unilateral disarmament never seems like a good idea.

It troubles me to give up on my friends and neighbors at the NCAA, but when the FBI beats you to a monstrously obvious problem in your own backyard, you’re clearly never going to fix it on your own.

So thanks for serving, Condi, and best of luck. If you thought Iranian sanctions or North Korean nukes were hard problems, wait until you try this one. And take your time about that invitation. Go save us from ourselves.



 
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Jack_Ripper said:

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinions
Dear Condoleezza Rice: Good luck fixing the cesspool that is the NCAA



Mitch Daniels February 1 at 4:20 PM




Dear Condi,

That invitation to speak on our campus still stands, but I see that you’ll be a little too busy this spring, now that you’ve accepted yet another “service opportunity” as chair of the new commission tasked by the NCAA to help it reform college basketball. You’ve always been a sucker for a good cause; and if ever a cause qualified, this one does.

When the FBI revealed its findings about the corrupt connections among shoe companies, agents, a few big-time college programs and coaches, and the Amateur Athletic Union or AAU (the first “A” increasingly looks like a misnomer), no one near the sport was shocked. The existence of this part of the cesspool has been in plain view for years. Those in a position to stop the scandals spawned by the “one-and-done” era — in which many top-tier players were required to enroll in college for one year before bolting for the NBA — have been either powerless to do so or actively interested in perpetuating the status quo.


When it was discovered that, at what we’ve always considered an academically admirable school, championships had been won by teams loaded with players who took completely phony classes, most of us were sincerely shocked. We were stunned again when, after years of cogitation, the NCAA delivered a penalty of . . . nothing. It was a final confession of futility, confirming the necessity of this special commission, if any meaningful change is going to happen from the collegiate end.

If the NCAA is impotent to stop the abuses, the NBA is all but an unindicted co-conspirator. The current arrangement works out beautifully for the league: It gets a free minor league player development system, a massively televised showcase for its next round of stars, and one less argument with a players union that prefers to limit, through its ineligible-until-age-19 rule, the number of competitors for the few hundred NBA roster spots. The league has every incentive to keep dragging its feet, so the most promising avenue for reform is to make the college game inhospitable to NBA exploitation and the rotten collusion that the one-and-done world fosters.

As for solutions, one can start by observing that almost no change could make things worse. I don’t pretend to know the single best answer, but it’s not hard to list a number of possibilities.

We could require a “year of readiness,” meaning that freshmen could practice but not play while they became acclimated to college life. This was the NCAA rule for many decades, and it makes great sense unless a “student” really has no intention of pursuing a real education.

Or the NCAA could simply use the rule already in effect for baseball, which gives young aspirants a choice between going professional straight from high school or entering college and staying a minimum of three years. Either of these approaches separates those seriously interested in higher education from those forced by the current system to pretend they are.

Another idea would be to allow players to depart early for the NBA, but the scholarships they received would be required to remain vacant for the balance of their four-year terms. Coaches who want to chase that next championship with full-time players masquerading as students could do so, but the following few seasons might be tough with rosters filled with walk-ons.

I’m convinced the college game would be more, not less popular, if a handful of would-be pretend students, whose names fans barely get a chance to know, instead went straight from high school to some sort of professional league. Doing so would certainly bring more parity and fairness to the college game. The play would still be amazingly athletic — most of us fans would not be able to tell the difference — and schools with genuine academic and conduct standards would no longer be at such a competitive disadvantage.


It’s startling how concentrated the phenomenon is. In the past five years, 45 percent of all “five-star” recruits, and 58 percent of all one-and-dones, have gone to just five schools. Our entire 14-member Big Ten conference, by contrast, has had 9.2 percent of the first category and 6.4 percent of the latter, collectively. One could tell conferences like ours that if we don’t like today’s situation, we can just establish our own rules, but unilateral disarmament never seems like a good idea.

It troubles me to give up on my friends and neighbors at the NCAA, but when the FBI beats you to a monstrously obvious problem in your own backyard, you’re clearly never going to fix it on your own.

So thanks for serving, Condi, and best of luck. If you thought Iranian sanctions or North Korean nukes were hard problems, wait until you try this one. And take your time about that invitation. Go save us from ourselves.



Click to expand...

That's awesome.
 
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Jack_Ripper said:

Democracy Dies in Darkness
Opinions
Dear Condoleezza Rice: Good luck fixing the cesspool that is the NCAA

Mitch Daniels February 1 at 4:20 PM

Dear Condi,

That invitation to speak on our campus still stands, but I see that you’ll be a little too busy this spring, now that you’ve accepted yet another “service opportunity” as chair of the new commission tasked by the NCAA to help it reform college basketball. You’ve always been a sucker for a good cause; and if ever a cause qualified, this one does.

When the FBI revealed its findings about the corrupt connections among shoe companies, agents, a few big-time college programs and coaches, and the Amateur Athletic Union or AAU (the first “A” increasingly looks like a misnomer), no one near the sport was shocked. The existence of this part of the cesspool has been in plain view for years. Those in a position to stop the scandals spawned by the “one-and-done” era — in which many top-tier players were required to enroll in college for one year before bolting for the NBA — have been either powerless to do so or actively interested in perpetuating the status quo.

When it was discovered that, at what we’ve always considered an academically admirable school, championships had been won by teams loaded with players who took completely phony classes, most of us were sincerely shocked. We were stunned again when, after years of cogitation, the NCAA delivered a penalty of . . . nothing. It was a final confession of futility, confirming the necessity of this special commission, if any meaningful change is going to happen from the collegiate end.

If the NCAA is impotent to stop the abuses, the NBA is all but an unindicted co-conspirator. The current arrangement works out beautifully for the league: It gets a free minor league player development system, a massively televised showcase for its next round of stars, and one less argument with a players union that prefers to limit, through its ineligible-until-age-19 rule, the number of competitors for the few hundred NBA roster spots. The league has every incentive to keep dragging its feet, so the most promising avenue for reform is to make the college game inhospitable to NBA exploitation and the rotten collusion that the one-and-done world fosters.

As for solutions, one can start by observing that almost no change could make things worse. I don’t pretend to know the single best answer, but it’s not hard to list a number of possibilities.

We could require a “year of readiness,” meaning that freshmen could practice but not play while they became acclimated to college life. This was the NCAA rule for many decades, and it makes great sense unless a “student” really has no intention of pursuing a real education.

Or the NCAA could simply use the rule already in effect for baseball, which gives young aspirants a choice between going professional straight from high school or entering college and staying a minimum of three years. Either of these approaches separates those seriously interested in higher education from those forced by the current system to pretend they are.

Another idea would be to allow players to depart early for the NBA, but the scholarships they received would be required to remain vacant for the balance of their four-year terms. Coaches who want to chase that next championship with full-time players masquerading as students could do so, but the following few seasons might be tough with rosters filled with walk-ons.

I’m convinced the college game would be more, not less popular, if a handful of would-be pretend students, whose names fans barely get a chance to know, instead went straight from high school to some sort of professional league. Doing so would certainly bring more parity and fairness to the college game. The play would still be amazingly athletic — most of us fans would not be able to tell the difference — and schools with genuine academic and conduct standards would no longer be at such a competitive disadvantage.

It’s startling how concentrated the phenomenon is. In the past five years, 45 percent of all “five-star” recruits, and 58 percent of all one-and-dones, have gone to just five schools. Our entire 14-member Big Ten conference, by contrast, has had 9.2 percent of the first category and 6.4 percent of the latter, collectively. One could tell conferences like ours that if we don’t like today’s situation, we can just establish our own rules, but unilateral disarmament never seems like a good idea.

It troubles me to give up on my friends and neighbors at the NCAA, but when the FBI beats you to a monstrously obvious problem in your own backyard, you’re clearly never going to fix it on your own.

So thanks for serving, Condi, and best of luck. If you thought Iranian sanctions or North Korean nukes were hard problems, wait until you try this one. And take your time about that invitation. Go save us from ourselves.

Click to expand...
Outstanding..,simply outstanding!!!
 
Jack_Ripper said:

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinions
Dear Condoleezza Rice: Good luck fixing the cesspool that is the NCAA



Mitch Daniels February 1 at 4:20 PM




Dear Condi,

That invitation to speak on our campus still stands, but I see that you’ll be a little too busy this spring, now that you’ve accepted yet another “service opportunity” as chair of the new commission tasked by the NCAA to help it reform college basketball. You’ve always been a sucker for a good cause; and if ever a cause qualified, this one does.

When the FBI revealed its findings about the corrupt connections among shoe companies, agents, a few big-time college programs and coaches, and the Amateur Athletic Union or AAU (the first “A” increasingly looks like a misnomer), no one near the sport was shocked. The existence of this part of the cesspool has been in plain view for years. Those in a position to stop the scandals spawned by the “one-and-done” era — in which many top-tier players were required to enroll in college for one year before bolting for the NBA — have been either powerless to do so or actively interested in perpetuating the status quo.


When it was discovered that, at what we’ve always considered an academically admirable school, championships had been won by teams loaded with players who took completely phony classes, most of us were sincerely shocked. We were stunned again when, after years of cogitation, the NCAA delivered a penalty of . . . nothing. It was a final confession of futility, confirming the necessity of this special commission, if any meaningful change is going to happen from the collegiate end.

If the NCAA is impotent to stop the abuses, the NBA is all but an unindicted co-conspirator. The current arrangement works out beautifully for the league: It gets a free minor league player development system, a massively televised showcase for its next round of stars, and one less argument with a players union that prefers to limit, through its ineligible-until-age-19 rule, the number of competitors for the few hundred NBA roster spots. The league has every incentive to keep dragging its feet, so the most promising avenue for reform is to make the college game inhospitable to NBA exploitation and the rotten collusion that the one-and-done world fosters.

As for solutions, one can start by observing that almost no change could make things worse. I don’t pretend to know the single best answer, but it’s not hard to list a number of possibilities.

We could require a “year of readiness,” meaning that freshmen could practice but not play while they became acclimated to college life. This was the NCAA rule for many decades, and it makes great sense unless a “student” really has no intention of pursuing a real education.

Or the NCAA could simply use the rule already in effect for baseball, which gives young aspirants a choice between going professional straight from high school or entering college and staying a minimum of three years. Either of these approaches separates those seriously interested in higher education from those forced by the current system to pretend they are.

Another idea would be to allow players to depart early for the NBA, but the scholarships they received would be required to remain vacant for the balance of their four-year terms. Coaches who want to chase that next championship with full-time players masquerading as students could do so, but the following few seasons might be tough with rosters filled with walk-ons.

I’m convinced the college game would be more, not less popular, if a handful of would-be pretend students, whose names fans barely get a chance to know, instead went straight from high school to some sort of professional league. Doing so would certainly bring more parity and fairness to the college game. The play would still be amazingly athletic — most of us fans would not be able to tell the difference — and schools with genuine academic and conduct standards would no longer be at such a competitive disadvantage.


It’s startling how concentrated the phenomenon is. In the past five years, 45 percent of all “five-star” recruits, and 58 percent of all one-and-dones, have gone to just five schools. Our entire 14-member Big Ten conference, by contrast, has had 9.2 percent of the first category and 6.4 percent of the latter, collectively. One could tell conferences like ours that if we don’t like today’s situation, we can just establish our own rules, but unilateral disarmament never seems like a good idea.

It troubles me to give up on my friends and neighbors at the NCAA, but when the FBI beats you to a monstrously obvious problem in your own backyard, you’re clearly never going to fix it on your own.

So thanks for serving, Condi, and best of luck. If you thought Iranian sanctions or North Korean nukes were hard problems, wait until you try this one. And take your time about that invitation. Go save us from ourselves.



Click to expand...
Nice to see a lot of the ideas that have been discussed here about this same issue make it into Mitch's article. That jab at UNC and the NCAA was amazing.
 
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So I'm guessing Mitch won't get invited to the "cool" NCAA parties if we get to the FF.
 
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Funny he left out the most obvious option, and fairest and most straightforward: no constraints. If your are good enough to go straight to the NBA- GO

I agree this pretend forced year is just dumb.
 
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DannyGranger said:
Funny he left out the most obvious option, and fairest and most straightforward: no constraints. If your are good enough to go straight to the NBA- GO

I agree this pretend forced year is just dumb.
Click to expand...
You obviously don't follow basketball very closely - the NCAA has no control over the what the NBA eligibility rules are.
 
DannyGranger said:
Funny he left out the most obvious option, and fairest and most straightforward: no constraints. If your are good enough to go straight to the NBA- GO

I agree this pretend forced year is just dumb.
Click to expand...

That requires the NBA to cooperate. His point on the article was that we can't depend on that because the current system benefits them too much.
 
Last edited:
32zone said:
You obviously don't follow basketball very closely - the NCAA has no control over the what the NBA eligibility rules are.
Click to expand...

That's not true. I'd you don't think there is coordination between them, I got some land to sell you
 
DannyGranger said:
That's not true. I'd you don't think there is coordination between them, I got some land to sell you
Click to expand...
You are the first person I've ever heard say that the NCAA is coordinating with the NBA to keep the one and done rule in place. You are on an island on this one. The NCAA has no say on the matter. One-and-done is the NBA’s rule, governed by the NBA’s and its players’ own interests, and it’s neither party’s responsibility to do what’s best for college basketball.
 
PebbleUO2 said:
I believe that the most effective idea in the OPed that the NCAA could implement unilaterally is counting 4 years of scholarships to be used for each recruit that turns pro. That would tend to distribute the top twenty players to more than a handful of schools and benefit student athletes.
Click to expand...
Would also place an emphasis on coaching again....would highly benefit Purdue in that regard.
 
Amazing stat that over 50% of 1 n done went to just 5 schools. That's crazy.

I'm guessing Daniels and Calipari don't see eye to eye on many things.
 
He mentions the large percentage of 5* and one & dones going to just 5 schools

Assuming it's: Duke, UNC, Kansas & Kentucky...

Was the 5th school Louisville?
 
Basically this " Lets punish the schools that can recruit really well because I'm angry we cant recruit for shit"

That's honestly what it comes across as, not a good look at all on Daniels part. I have a lot of Boilermaker family members and they say he's an excellent president and ambassador for the school and I wouldn't question that but he is missing the boat on this whole thing completely.
 
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PebbleUO2 said:
I believe that the most effective idea in the OPed that the NCAA could implement unilaterally is counting 4 years of scholarships to be used for each recruit that turns pro. That would tend to distribute the top twenty players to more than a handful of schools and benefit student athletes.
Click to expand...

Yes.....some of us posters have hinted/suggested this, plus it doesn't change the NBA eligibility, requiring the union to bless it.....it's all on the NCAA institutions via scholarship rules and would level the distribution somewhat, IMO.

I'm skeptical as to anything near this being enacted.....but one never knows.

___________________________

"Another idea would be to allow players to depart early for the NBA, but the scholarships they received would be required to remain vacant for the balance of their four-year terms. Coaches who want to chase that next championship with full-time players masquerading as students could do so, but the following few seasons might be tough with rosters filled with walk-ons."
 
Broncos16 said:
Basically this " Lets punish the schools that can recruit really well because I'm angry we cant recruit for shit"

That's honestly what it comes across as, not a good look at all on Daniels part. I have a lot of Boilermaker family members and they say he's an excellent president and ambassador for the school and I wouldn't question that but he is missing the boat on this whole thing completely.
Click to expand...
You are entitled to your take, however that is not mine.
 
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Broncos16 said:
Basically this " Lets punish the schools that can recruit really well because I'm angry we cant recruit for shit"

That's honestly what it comes across as, not a good look at all on Daniels part. I have a lot of Boilermaker family members and they say he's an excellent president and ambassador for the school and I wouldn't question that but he is missing the boat on this whole thing completely.
Click to expand...
Well, I would say this comment comes off as "lets leave the cesspool alone because my school does well operating in a cesspool and I don't care if everyone thinks my school is a cesspool since all I care about is winning".
 
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Broncos16 said:
Basically this " Lets punish the schools that can recruit really well because I'm angry we cant recruit for shit"

That's honestly what it comes across as, not a good look at all on Daniels part. I have a lot of Boilermaker family members and they say he's an excellent president and ambassador for the school and I wouldn't question that but he is missing the boat on this whole thing completely.
Click to expand...
Said in my best Jeff Brohm voice, "Is this or is this not an institution for higher learning?"
If the UK's of the world only wish to serve as a 9 month stop for athletes and completely remove the student out of the equation then they should just join the Big Baller Brand league.
 
Last edited:
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32zone said:
Said in my best Jeff Brohm voice, "Is this or this not an institution for higher learning?"
If the UK's of the world only wish to serve as a 9 month stop for athletes and completely remove the student out of the equation then they should just join the Big Baller Brand league.
Click to expand...
This is what is totally laughable because the one and not done thing on E:60 clearly showed Calipari telling his players to essentially forget the academic side of school after the fall semester and only focus on basketball if they are thinking of leaving early. That goes against everything that should go hand in hand with the NCAA and an institution of higher learning. I would really like to look at the transcripts of the players at UK in their first year and my guess is it would be a lot of incredibly basic courses that are all the same for each player in a general studies 'major' and then the spring would likely be the minimum number of hours to be considered a full time student that they end up not attending any of the classes.
 
JohnnyDoeBoiler said:
This is what is totally laughable because the one and not done thing on E:60 clearly showed Calipari telling his players to essentially forget the academic side of school after the fall semester and only focus on basketball if they are thinking of leaving early. That goes against everything that should go hand in hand with the NCAA and an institution of higher learning. I would really like to look at the transcripts of the players at UK in their first year and my guess is it would be a lot of incredibly basic courses that are all the same for each player in a general studies 'major' and then the spring would likely be the minimum number of hours to be considered a full time student that they end up not attending any of the classes.
Click to expand...
If the player isn't taking classes and hasn't made an effort towards graduating the NCAA should take the scholarship away for the next year. What ever happened to that APR(Not sure if that's what they called it) thing?
 
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PebbleUO2 said:
I believe that the most effective idea in the OPed that the NCAA could implement unilaterally is counting 4 years of scholarships to be used for each recruit that turns pro. That would tend to distribute the top twenty players to more than a handful of schools and benefit student athletes.
Click to expand...

I like the idea. One consideration is the incentive effects - pesky things they are. Schools would have an incentive to slow down a one-and-done player's development, sit them when they should be playing to reduce stats, or otherwise prevent them from being immediately attractive to NBA teams. That presents a whole new set of problems.
 
Or only go after one of these types of players every other year. The problem it creates is a good problem because it forces parity on the league, which makes basketball a lot more fun.
 
32zone said:
You obviously don't follow basketball very closely - the NCAA has no control over the what the NBA eligibility rules are.
Click to expand...

You are right, they don't control the NBA rules, but they could set rules that force the NBAs hand. If colleges don't want "one and dones", all they have to do is change the rules prohibiting them from playing the first year as Mitch suggested. Doing that for a year or two, I bet the NBA would have a series of lawsuits from players wanting employment.
 
Esox54547 said:
Thanks for posting. Awesome! Mitch has some stones, you have to give him that.
Click to expand...
Sure does! Great method to use the Journalist role to call out the NCAA. As a sitting President of Purdue a lot of people in the NCAA have to be chewing nails right now. Love It!

I wonder if this will hurt our seeding.
 
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