Seth Davis's ideology creeps out of the woodwork

I don't know if anyone else watched the postgame between the end of OSU-Wisconsin and the selection show yesterday, but CBS ran a little piece on the NBA's one-full-year-out-of-high-school rule and how it's impacted college hoops.

One of the coaches featured in the piece was USC's Tim Floyd, who said something in the whereabouts of, "If I thought a kid was going to be a one-and-done player, I wouldn't touch him. I would never wanna be the coach who recruited a kid to selfishly use him for a year and jeopardize his pro career."

Now I ain't no big city hoops analyst, but isn't that exactly what this O.J. Mayo kid is going to be? Someone help me out.

After the piece ended, Greg, Clark, and Seth each gave their two bits on the matter. In regard to Bob Knight's objection that a player could be recruited knowing he would leave after freshman year, thereby enabling him to play without ever attending a second-semester class, I think I heard Clark say something crazy, but I'm not sure. If I heard right, he said something along the lines of, "That would only be an extreme case. And if a kid doesn't plan on attending class, he'll do that regardless of whether he's an NCAA athlete."

Um, no Clark. I tried this. A number of semesters. It doesn't work for those of us who don't have NBA careers in front of us. Eventually the rest of us accept the reality that we need a degree to make money after college. Also, I think the General's point was that the situation threatens competetive fairness, not that it allows athletes to be academically lazy.

Again, though, I think that's what Clark said; I wanna know if anyone can confirm this for me. He may have simply said that a player who plans to leave for the NBA after a season would skip his second semester classes regardless of whether the rule was in place. If so, I apologize to Clark Kellogg for the misquote.

Seth Davis, for the record, opposes the rule. He believes that if the NBA has a market for these players' services, they should have the right to choose whether they want the money or the education and that it's not the NBA's right to decide for them.

Seth Davis, College Hoops Analyst and Libertarian? Hmmm.