March Madness May Have Just Gotten A Little Thorazine

A kid named Jeremy Tyler just pumped a burning slug into big time college basketball’s gut, and now we get to watch it die a slow painful death, which I don’t really have a problem with. Jeremy Tyler is a 6’11” high school junior in San Diego who is skipping his senior year to go play professional basketball in Europe. I say good for him. Big time college sports – football and basketball – are indentured servitude at best and slavery at worst. They’re part of a subtle syndicate with the NFL and NBA who use the college games as free minor leagues, and the colleges make billions of dollars pimping out kids. The NFL has a more legitimate “argument” for forcing kids to wait to play than the NBA does. Eighteen year old bodies are not developed enough to endure the constant car crashes that pass for life in professional football. That’s not the case in the NBA, but a few years ago they decided to follow football’s lead and instituted a policy where players had to be at least one year removed from their high school class’s graduation date, which ultimately forced kids to play college ball for at least a year. These kids are squeaking out 2.0’s in the fall and then showing up for zero classes in the spring because grades don’t come out until after the basketball season is over. It’s a sham. Everybody knows it’s a sham. But the people making the money don’t care. Jeremy Tyler decided to hold up a middle finger to the NCAA. His grades and test scores are good enough to get into college, but he doesn’t want to go. He wants to play basketball. Some European team is willing to pay him six figures a year to do that. He’ll face better competition, and if there are holes in his game they’re more likely to be exposed and he’ll have an opportunity to fix them before he makes the transition to the NBA in a couple of years. The reason this is going to kill big time college basketball is because it doesn’t hurt the NBA at all. They still get their minor league that they don’t have to pay for, and it’s a better minor league. College basketball is going to be reduced to the level of the rest of the non-football sports, an afterthought. His grades and scores aren't going away so if basketball doesn't work out, college is still going to be there. Good luck kid.