Last night’s NBA Draft had its fair share of beneficiaries: The Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat hit home runs scored touchdowns slam-dunked their way to respectability by respectively snagging the
draft’s two most coveted prospects, Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley.
And while an ESPN basketball insider might make the case that draft
night was a fiasco for the Sacramento King’s selection–by virtue of the
fact that their pick now has to move to Cowtown, USA–no one had more to
lose from the over-hyped media frenzy last night than college
basketball. For the first time in draft history, picks one, two, and
three were college freshman (Rose went to Memphis, Beasley was a Kansas
State man, and OJ Mayo spent a year at USC). Today’s Baltimore Sun might have said it best with their headline, “NBA draft highlights college rent-a-freshman dilemma.”
Can’t really blame the athlete; choosing to take big bucks instead of finishing general education requirements seems like a (insert sports cliché here). And while we have said it once, we will say it again: It’s really not a good time to be a college basketball fan. I was thinking about suggesting alternative December-March college activities for fed-up basketball fans, like actually going to the gym and playing your own basketball pick-up games instead of vicariously living through athletes, but then I realized that those expectations are ludicrous. Sigh. Alright then, I guess we just have to settle for watered-down college sports.