Later this week, some of college basketball’s best players will make the jump to the superstardom. The NBA draft is slated for Thursday night in New York and many of the last season’s stars will walk on stage and be presented with a hat and jersey, and shake hands with NBA commissioner David Stern.

Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin will be the first to make that walk. The Los Angeles Clippers, who hold the first pick, have already announced the Sooner forward will be their choice.

But following him will a line of players who spent just one year playing college basketball. That fact irks college coaches to no end.

Sooner coach Jeff Capel is among a very vocal majority who think the NBA’s four-year-old policy of making players ineligible for the draft until they’re at least one year out of school is undermining college basketball.

“I think it’s a really bad rule,” Capel said. “In my opinion, I think it makes a mockery of education in college. I also think it’s condescending on the NBA’s part.”

You can’t blame the players for making the leap. Among this year’s crop of underclassmen wanting to make the jump are four who just completed their first year of college basketball— USC’s DeMar DeRozan, Memphis’ Tyreke Evans, UCLA’s Jrue Holiday, Ohio State’s B.J. Mullens.

All are projected as first-round picks, but it will be a slight change from last year’s draft when four of the first five players taken were just one year removed from high school and six of the top 11 never didn’t return for their sophomore season.

Capel and those in his fraternity don’t have a problem with players who are ready entering the NBA draft. Their problem is the way the NBA exploits the college game by making them go to college at all.

Capel points to four of the biggest names in the league as reasons why truly elite players shouldn’t be forced to go to college.

LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett all went straight from high school to the NBA and they’re among the game’s biggest stars.

Of course, for every player who was able to start a sustainable NBA career without going to college, there’s dozens more who weren’t so fortunate.

Some would argue the NBA’s one-year rule is for their benefit, but that’s a ridiculous notion. Even Stern says so.

“This is not about the NCAA, this is not an enforcement of some social program,” Stern said. “This is a business decision by the NBA, which is: We like to see our players in competition after high school.”

But why so little of it?

Major League Baseball will draft players out of high school, but once they enter a four-year college, they’re not eligible for three years or until they turn 21.

The NFL requires players be in college for three years before they can enter the draft.

Players likely won’t graduate in that span of time, but they can get on track for a degree.

“Our sport is so different because you don’t deal with this in any other sport,” Capel said. “It puts us in conflict with educators and professors at the university. The mission of universities is to go there to get an education and these stop-gap situations aren’t happening.”

To Capel’s credit, he was able to persuade Griffin to play for two seasons before making the leap. Willie Warren, who was projected as a definite first-round pick, elected to return for his sophomore season next year.

In order to do that both had to remain in solid academic standing as freshmen. Players who know they’re just going to play one season often don’t. Due to an eligibility quirk, players just need to enroll in spring classes to play second half of the college basketball season. It doesn’t mean they actually have to go to one.

“You pass six hours in the fall, you don’t go to school in the spring, and the next thing you know, you’re still eligible to play the whole year,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “It has been abused a little bit.”

OU is one of many schools that have mandatory attendance requirements for its athletes, but some schools don’t. Those who don’t risk taking massive hits in their APR score and a subsequent reduction in scholarships. To some schools, it’s worth the risk.

Most coaches agree there wouldn’t be as much if players could enter the NBA out of high school, but those who chose the college route had to stay for at least two years.

“I think that eliminates guys who don’t really want to be in college and don’t want an education,” Capel said. “They’re just using the system.”

But the NBA is going to do whatever it wants to do. There’s no doubt making players go to college for a year provides a much better platform to evaluate talent. It also makes incoming rookies more marketable thanks to a season in the college spotlight.

All that will be on display Thursday night. The hype machine will be in full force as the first-round picks are announced.

“The whole climate of our sport has changed, but I don’t think the NBA cares about that,” Capel said.

John Shinn

366-3536

jshinn@normantranscript.com