On Wednesday, April 25, 2018, the “Commision of College Basketball” has called for a number of reforms within the NCAA system during a press conference. The commision was led by former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice in which some new rules and regulations were recommended to help the college players, as well as the NCAA as a whole. The conference’s main focus was to help protect the college players who wish to be drafted to the NBA, as well as ending cheating within the NCAA system. The NCAA’s cheating environment is called “toxic” by the commision as it has given colleges great results and rewards in the past. The commission says that its reform will help the NCAA as a whole.
“One-and-Done” Rule
One of the most prominent points of interest within the press conference was the idea of getting rid of the “one-and-done” rule, which requires any player to at least play one year of college basketball, or in the least wait one year before joining the NBA. A big question about this is that the “one-and-done” rule is it was put into play by the NBA, not NCAA. The abolishment of the rule it would return to the days where players would be drafted to the NBA straight out of high school, like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James. If the “one-and-done” rule is not changed the commision states that they will try to find other ways of implementing this, such as preventing freshmen to get a multi-year scholarship if they choose to leave the program after only one year. The earliest time this abolition of the new rule won’t be until the 2020 draft.
Un-drafted Players
The commision also included reforms to help players who unfortunately end up going Un-drafted. The commision also wants to put in place a way for players who are not drafted to go back to college. The players who have declared themselves available for the draft, but then are not chosen can return to school, only if they do not sign some professional contract. The NCAA rules say that if a player hired an agent, then their college career is over, the commision wishes to change that rule in where if they have an agent, but do not sign a contract while they decide to enter the draft, they will be able to remain at the college level. The stipulation of this rule is, that if a player chooses to return, it must be at the same school where they left.
Cheating
The commision also requests harder punishments for those who cheat within the NCAA system. Rice states that the commision wishes to protect the athletes who are in a system which places winning over everything else. They want to to use neutral investigators to deal with these problems, as well as enforcing harsher punishments than the NCAA system already has. They wish to implement increases in penalties and restrictions. The commision feels as though the NCAA is not applying their rules well enough and in turn, it is hurting their players. The new rules would increase the penalties for many level 1 infraction such as a five-year post-season ban, as well as a loss of all postseason revenue.
