Pro Players in College

When I was growing up College Basketball was just coming into it's own. I remember vividly the Larry Bird, Magic Johnson game. I think I remember that Ivy League Penn also made the Final Four led maybe by a player named Price?

Other Finals are easy to remember. Villanova shooting the lights out and upsetting Georgetown in the final. Of course the Lorenzo Charles put back that led NC State over Houston and Phi Slamma Jamma. I remember DePaul going into the tournament number 1 two years in a row and losing both times in the first round. Sorry Mark Aguire. Georgetown winning, Ewing with the t-shirts under the uniform, then after winning Micheal Graham making known in the post game interviews that Georgetown might have relaxed the entry standards just a wee bit for athletes. UNLV running like crazy, Laetner beating Kentucky, and even coming home from work in my early twenties, having tapes the Syracuse Indiana game and watching it on tape at one am not knowing who had won.

So it was a valid question the other day when my son who loves College Ball and had Kentucky beating Kansas in his bracket asked me " why don't you love college basketball like you used to? "

Watching the championship game tonight I thought about that. Honestly the tattoos do not help. Alan Iverson ruined much of the game for me with his thug markings that have become the norm. I know that is foolish and superficial but it is true. Still I enjoyed the game more well after that event than I do now. I think it is the rule about 18 year olds not being able to go pro and having to go to college for a year. I just think that is dumb. So Kentucky wins, because Calipari is becoming the King of bringing in pro players for one year. It is a talent but it is a joke, they do not even pretend to be student athletes. Most of them stop going to class in he second semester, it is just a charade I think we would be better off letting them go pro.

It just bugs me.