http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/big12/2008-05-16-arthur-eligibility_N.htm

This is why the argument of players are getting a free education crap will never fly with me. The NCAA is nothing but a big plantation racket!

A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT?

The NBA Development League is a minor league farm system that began as the National Basketball Development League in 2001. Before it debuted some critics wondered if it would keep the best high school players from attending college.

Russ Granik, then NBA deputy commissioner, sought to calm those fears at a 2000 meeting of the Knight Commission, a blue-ribbon panel of educators that presses for reform in college athletics.

Cedric Dempsey, then executive director of the NCAA, told Granik he hoped some players would go directly from high school to the NBDL.

"We have a number of athletes who come to school and have no intention of getting a college education," he said then. "They want to leave as quickly as they can. They showcase their wares and they're gone."

What he said then remains true, Dempsey says now -- except more so thanks to one-and-done, the NBA rule that players can be drafted after their freshman year of college.

"You get kids who have no intention of getting through school or learning," Dempsey says. "I don't think that's a healthy environment at all."

Jim Haney, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, favors baseball's rule, in which players can be drafted out of high school but can't be drafted for three years if they choose to enter college.

"Some say that's self-serving, and to a degree it is for the coach," Haney says. "But if all our decisions were based on a few kids who are going to be stars in the NBA, we're sacrificing those who would benefit from going to college."

By Erik Brady

The baseball way will not work for the NBA.

first of all...players drafted out of HS never go straight to MLB. They start off at single A and work their way up. So a young kid from HS might has well go to school and enjoy COllege. Basketball kids dont have that..If they get drafted out of HS, they go straight to the league.

second...NBA has a salary cap. The sooner a kid gets in the league, the more money he gets.

they should pay college athletes just like they do for students that work in the library or any other campus based job.

Colleges should pay because last I checked, they made big money - big money=business. if its a business, they should pay.

Nalod you disregard of athletes who just want to play basketball irks me man. Let the NBDL become what it should be a real minor league not some red headed stepchild of a league.

Trust me if the NBA wasn't in bed together helping them become a modern day plantation in today's society they would funnel the kids straight from highschool into their "OWN" minor league system with great coaches, they would actually be incompetition with the NCAA . This is how it should be.

modern day plantation...I really don't understand how you can keep on comparing playing in college with one of the most heinous acts in history.

American slaves were murdered, degraded, raped and any other nasty things you can think of. American collegiate basketball players are not paid to play basketball. yeah, I can see the similarities

Where do you think Omar Cook has been all these yrs ?

Playing in Europe, he made the choice and has to live with it, just like any other red blooded american has the right to do.