Probably paywall so just some notable quotables…
DAN SHAUGHNESSY
The men’s NCAA tournament used to be great. But now that it’s professional basketball? No thanks.
“With the Power Four conferences, it’s fraud in terms of terminology,” says Leo Papile, former player personnel director of the Celtics (14 seasons) and presently a senior adviser with the Clippers who founded the Boston Athletic Basketball Club (BABC) 48 years ago. “They use the term ‘student-athletes.’ That’s fraud. If you brought that to trial, it would be very easy to prove that that does not exist. I’m not a scholar, but I know that in order to get a degree, you can’t bounce around three or four schools in four years.”
“Today’s NCAA basketball is unregulated professional basketball. Frothy fans boost their favorite school, screaming their heads off for skilled professional players, most of whom have zero allegiance to said college, and some of whom maybe never set foot in a classroom or interacted with anyone on campus outside of the athletic department and compliance office.”
“When history is reviewed years from now, there’ll be an asterisk for UConn winning last year because their starting guards were fifth-year players,” says Papile. “That’s like 15-year-olds playing in Little League. It’s the same with St. John’s this year. I know Pitino’s a wizard now and Dan Hurley’s a wizard. The shills talk about how they’re all Michelangelo and Picasso. They make them out to be geniuses. They’re nice guys and everything, but they’re not kings of science. They’re using players that for the previous hundred years would have been ineligible. Three schools is the norm. These are short-term rentals.“
How can programs like Tommy Amaker's Harvard compete in the modern college basketball landscape? “I’m a big proponent of student-athletes being compensated but don’t like the path this has evolved into,” says Harvard’s coach of 17 seasons. “It’s now strictly pay-for-play and there’s been an incredible disruption of the system. This era has gone from being transformational to strictly transactional . . . as for fans, I don’t know how you get connected to individual players like before. There is no stability, no continuity.”
“Guys will be transferring at halftime pretty soon,” adds Papile.
“These donors are adult men who dress up in costumes, like for Auburn or Texas Tech or Oklahoma,” says Papile. “Adult children. Basketball wastrels. You’re gonna give a million dollars to be the 13th team in the SEC to get in the tournament? Imagine that being your life’s purpose?”
New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick last weekend wrote, “Big-time/big-ticket college sports are now predicated on a form of legalized adult mental illness, including responsible adults who provide NIL money to athletes who might stay a year to satisfy the donor’s shallow lust to see ‘their school’ win games by their purchased-at-auction human chattel.”
“That sums it up in very few words,” says Lee Raker, who played in a Final Four with Ralph Sampson at Virginia in the early 1980s and was drafted by the Clippers. “I don’t understand how people can pour money into this. It’s not student-athletes. It’s become just about where you can get the most money and there’s no restrictions. How is this system good for anybody other than the athletes monetizing themselves before they get to the NBA?
“You can’t develop kids and make them play better if you’ve got them for just one year. Everybody loses that community, and connection to the school. It used to be you’d follow your team and the big reward was watching a group graduate after playing four years together maybe making the Final Four. Not now. These are not student-athletes. They are paid athletes who happen to be in a college.”
DAN SHAUGHNESSY
The men’s NCAA tournament used to be great. But now that it’s professional basketball? No thanks.
“With the Power Four conferences, it’s fraud in terms of terminology,” says Leo Papile, former player personnel director of the Celtics (14 seasons) and presently a senior adviser with the Clippers who founded the Boston Athletic Basketball Club (BABC) 48 years ago. “They use the term ‘student-athletes.’ That’s fraud. If you brought that to trial, it would be very easy to prove that that does not exist. I’m not a scholar, but I know that in order to get a degree, you can’t bounce around three or four schools in four years.”
“Today’s NCAA basketball is unregulated professional basketball. Frothy fans boost their favorite school, screaming their heads off for skilled professional players, most of whom have zero allegiance to said college, and some of whom maybe never set foot in a classroom or interacted with anyone on campus outside of the athletic department and compliance office.”
“When history is reviewed years from now, there’ll be an asterisk for UConn winning last year because their starting guards were fifth-year players,” says Papile. “That’s like 15-year-olds playing in Little League. It’s the same with St. John’s this year. I know Pitino’s a wizard now and Dan Hurley’s a wizard. The shills talk about how they’re all Michelangelo and Picasso. They make them out to be geniuses. They’re nice guys and everything, but they’re not kings of science. They’re using players that for the previous hundred years would have been ineligible. Three schools is the norm. These are short-term rentals.“
How can programs like Tommy Amaker's Harvard compete in the modern college basketball landscape? “I’m a big proponent of student-athletes being compensated but don’t like the path this has evolved into,” says Harvard’s coach of 17 seasons. “It’s now strictly pay-for-play and there’s been an incredible disruption of the system. This era has gone from being transformational to strictly transactional . . . as for fans, I don’t know how you get connected to individual players like before. There is no stability, no continuity.”
“Guys will be transferring at halftime pretty soon,” adds Papile.
“These donors are adult men who dress up in costumes, like for Auburn or Texas Tech or Oklahoma,” says Papile. “Adult children. Basketball wastrels. You’re gonna give a million dollars to be the 13th team in the SEC to get in the tournament? Imagine that being your life’s purpose?”
New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick last weekend wrote, “Big-time/big-ticket college sports are now predicated on a form of legalized adult mental illness, including responsible adults who provide NIL money to athletes who might stay a year to satisfy the donor’s shallow lust to see ‘their school’ win games by their purchased-at-auction human chattel.”
“That sums it up in very few words,” says Lee Raker, who played in a Final Four with Ralph Sampson at Virginia in the early 1980s and was drafted by the Clippers. “I don’t understand how people can pour money into this. It’s not student-athletes. It’s become just about where you can get the most money and there’s no restrictions. How is this system good for anybody other than the athletes monetizing themselves before they get to the NBA?
“You can’t develop kids and make them play better if you’ve got them for just one year. Everybody loses that community, and connection to the school. It used to be you’d follow your team and the big reward was watching a group graduate after playing four years together maybe making the Final Four. Not now. These are not student-athletes. They are paid athletes who happen to be in a college.”
