By Evan Weiner |
Attention student-athletes, particularly men’s basketball players. The National Collegiate Athletic Association wants to help you find an agent to make your transition between college ball and professional basketball whether it is the National Basketball Association or maybe the NBA’s development league as seamless as possible. The NCAA has some suggestions as to what makes a good agent and that agent better have a bachelor’s degree from college because after all the NCAA is all about providing an education to its thousands of student-athletes. That means Bill Gates cannot apply to be a certified NCAA agent because he dropped out of Harvard. Steve Jobs was also a college dropout so he could not be in that pool of NCAA-worthy agents. The NCAA also wants agents who have been certified by the National Basketball Players Association and have three years of NBPA certification. Also would be NCAA approved agents would have to go to NCAA offices in Indianapolis and take the NCAA test making them an NCAA certified agent. Here are a few things to remember about this NCAA scheme. The student-athletes are not unionized and don’t have to even pretend that they are listening to the college presidents, chancellors, regents, directors and the NCAA itself.
There is also another problem, just 60 college basketball players are drafted annually by the NBA. But many more turn pro and head to Europe or Asia or China and there is probably a pretty good chance that players who seek to play internationally are not represented by National Basketball Players Association certified agents and international players who are in the NCAA Men’s College Basketball industry may have people back home who have no college degree, aren’t certified to represent NBA players and have no want to take an NCAA test in Indianapolis. The NCAA barely can say it has any integrity but it keeps selling itself that way.
This article was republished with permission from the original publisher, Evan Weiner.