Author David Shields writes about going pro in The New York Times:
I suspect the real reason the N.F.L. and N.B.A. don’t want high schoolers and college underclassmen to play with their ball is that they don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with National Collegiate Athletic Association, which serves as a sort of free minor league and unpaid promotional department for the pros. The N.C.A.A. is a multibillion-dollar business built on the talents of players who are often unqualified for or uninterested in being students and who benefit materially from the system only if they are among the few who turn professional.
Teenage pros are hardly limited to football and basketball. In his first season of professional hockey, Wayne Gretzky was 18. The new star of Major League Soccer is 14-year-old Freddy Adu. John McEnroe turned pro after his freshman year at Stanford. Tiger Woods did so after his sophomore year. Venus Williams and her sister Serena left school in their early teens to play tennis. Gary Sheffield entered the major leagues at 19, as did Mickey Mantle.
Most baseball players don’t attend college, and few graduate. Only 22 percent of the players in the N.H.L. attended college. Yet there is never an outcry over youthful debuts in hockey, soccer, tennis, golf and baseball.
NewMexiKen has gone 360 degrees on this. Now I say, pay them to play in college or let them turn pro.
Update: Greg Hansen talks about college vs. the NBA in today’s Arizona Daily Star.