Sports Illustrated layoffs

Neither is a business like the NBA deciding they'd be better off with more seasoned, mature employees. Whatever, the NBA long ago decided the product was fine by allowing in the young 'ens. But it's no mystery as to why NCAA hopes has subsequently suffered, thus leading to the marginalization of its writers. If you got rid of postseason tournaments and made the regular season valuable, you might get another book like Season on the Brink. As a selfish reader, I'd like that. The see-saw of that season back when the Big Ten didn't have a tourney was great reading.

I know the NCAA would lose money without postseason tournaments, but they unwittingly chopped themselves off at the knee by undermining the importance of the regular season. It'd be a bold move to revert back for one of these big conferences, but I doubt the numbers could be justified. Like would they generate enough interest and TV ratings by raising the importance of the reg. season to overcome the loss of money from a conference tourney? Has anyone ever done that? Have the numbers been run on that? And how would you know without doing it?

 

Because he's Alma, he knows what's best for all.

 

Then have the teams make those decisions separately. It's like a salary cap, a rule to protect owners from making dumb choices.

 

Someone else would be able to perhaps clarify, but I'm pretty sure a league's teams cannot apply different employment rules like that. Seems like it's all or nothing.

 

No, but making some attempt to protect not only them but also the college and pro markets from awful decisions is the right move.

Right now, anyone not drafted in the first round has no guaranteed contract. Was it a good thing when 18-year-olds were getting bad advice, hiring agents, and then falling to the NBA-DL?

 

What I was referring to is the decision whether to draft high school seniors. If a team believes a player would be better with college experience, that's its choice to make.

 

It's still their choice. And if the NCAA removed the arbitrary rule that declaring for the draft ends your eligibility, players could make a more informed decision. But both the NBA and the NCAA act to protect themselves.

 

Oh I see. Still, a lot of teens are hurt by the aspiration to go straight to the pros, which if the league instituted a 21 year old age minimum, would not cause kids to take their eyes off college. Listen, I know the whole argument for allowing these kids to market their skills, etc., but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that the product in the NBA and the NCAA is better now than it was before Kevin Garnett -- an outlier like LeBron -- started the rush to go straight from high school to the pros. I'm just one person but my enjoyment of both has dropped off precipitously. Half the guys drafted each year are completely unknown to me bc they're either European, right out of high school or they only played one year of college. That lack of familiarity bleeds over into the NBA. It's just a helluva lot harder to keep tabs on the league, its rosters and its new blood than it used to be. Same goes for college. The roster turnovers are so extreme in the major college ranks from year to year that it's head-spinning. So maybe I shouldn't say the product has become worse, but the ability to follow it has become a lot more challenging. And this is just basic familiarity with the participants.

Imagine if all of a sudden football became huge overseas and started sending pro prospects into the draft. Or guys became big enough that they actually could go straight to the pros without getting killed. It'd have a similar effect on our engagement with the sports, the college game, the draft, etc.

 

They are both minor league sports, but college football has the same advantage that the NFL and Premier League have over other professional sports, which is that they are event programming on a day of the week that people are free to be communal.

 

I'm sorry people making decisions that they believe is what's best for them is taking away from your enjoyment. Though I kind of doubt it really affects the NBA as you find out the good players quickly enough.

If you truly believe the NBA is worse since Garnett, first please explain how it got better since the shit in the late 90's. Second, tease out the change in quality because of young players from the big change in style.

 

Remember DeJuan Wagner at Memphis? Going pro early saved him around $7 million in lost earnings. Had Calapari not pushed him into the NBA, he'd have nothing today. ESPN 30 for 30 on Calapari is pretty good.

 

Well, there's also that little path-dependent triviality that as a thriving spectator sport college football was, you know, first. Pro football didn't really rival the college game in popularity until post-WWII at the earliest.