Chapter 4: What the Game's been missingWhile the fight to compensate student athletes for their play was making more progress than ever, The NCAA was pushing it's stance that student athletes are students and should not be payed. NCAA was now reforming itself urging top athletic schools to try to retain students who participated in athletics until the student has graduated.
This was easier for football programs because NFL only allowed players to enter draft after their Jr. year. For basketball, no kid was going to put off making potential millions to stay in school another 2 or three years if they had the talent to go pro.
Also NCAA was loosening up some of it's rules such as allowing coaching staff to provide snacks/limited meals to athletes as long as the snack or meal was provided to the entire team. Before, this was not allowed as the rules stated that scholarship athletes would receive no additional benefits outside of their scholarship money.
But many athletes' scholarship was not enough to cover expenses like food and cost of books/ travel.
Skipping a few years of college for the glory and fame of the pros is not a possibility for most athletes playing collegiate sports. There are only an elite few who make the jump and have long successful careers. Still many leave school early to chase a dream. Some drop out due to off court issues that may include some type of scandal. For the most part these kids want to go a college or university and graduate. They all want success.
This upcoming season is expected to be great for college basketball. Due to an expected lock out in the NBA, many players chose to come back to school and skip entering the NBA draft. There are a handful of guys that are "Pro- Ready" and will follow up their performances in last years March Madness Tournament with even better performances this year.
A few names to Keep in mind this year:
Neal Bridges, Forward - North Carolina
K. Spade, Forward - Miami
Jackson Ellis, Forward - UCLA
Moses Cuh, Center - Florida
David IpodkingCarter, Gaurd - Villanova
Kevin Parker, Gaurd - Butler
This year looks to be an amazing year. This will be what the collegiate game has been missing for so long, that group of guys that come back for another shot at the
championship.