Avery Trendel
Writer, Charlotte, NC
English 1102-061 Andrews
2010 - present
2010 - present
Blog Post #1- March 28th, 2013
With the excitement of the NCAA tournament and “March Madness” underway this past weekend, it made it nearly impossible for me to think about anything besides my favorite sport: basketball. I couldn’t help but watch some of these amazing college athletes and wonder a couple of things. Which players in the tournament are good enough to become professionals one day? Also, which players should already be professionals? That's the big question these days in the basketball world.
Having to come up with an inquiry topic, naturally my brain began focusing on the controversial NBA age limit rule that was instituted back in 2006. Most colleges hate the rule, and frequently protest about the damage it’s causing to both the college game and the term “student-athlete”. This is the most fascinating part in my eyes, because when the NBA put the rule into effect seven years ago it claimed it was with the intent of encouraging more players to attend colleges where they'd receive some sort of education or maturation before entering into the professional ranks with millions of dollars on hand.
How could a rule based around education and maturation make the educators unhappy? Isn’t that what the colleges should want?
It turns out that the issue is not quite that simple. The age limit instituted during the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement in 2006 states that a player must be at least 19 years of age and one year removed from high school before they may be eligible to sign with a pro team. However, the only players affected by this rule were the uber-talented. In years past, if a player had the talent and skills to enter the professional draft straight from high school, they did it. As a result the world has had long and familiar exposures with names such as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, and Kevin Garnett. Each has made millions and millions of dollars in salary and endorsements on top of the numerous individual accolades and championships they have won with their performance. In other words, they did alright even without that college education.
Now, using this same example, imagine LeBron James being forced to attend one year of college before he could pursue the millions of dollars he already knew were headed his way. He would have dominated the basketball games of course, but would he really even have needed to go to class? After one semester, he would be eligible to play ball through the second semester, then he would be off to the pros.
Let’s say he won the championship that year and became the face of “college basketball” in the process. College basketball, the same sport that glorifies its “student-athletes”, would have been publicly represented by someone who probably attended only a handful of classes during a single semester.
What message does that send? Why would the NBA not want to start making profits off of this talent immediately? It’s a complicated issue that has led me to want to explore more into the question I posed above: Why does the NBA require players to wait a year out of high school to join, even if colleges don’t see it the same way?
Lebron dubbed "The Chosen One" in high school.
Blog Post #2 - April 2nd, 2013
If you’re reading this post wondering why you don’t understand where I’m going with things, it’s because this post is an example of what my teacher and I like to call “informal research”. I’m basically going to just ramble off little facts that I found from a couple articles, describe a couple pictures I looked up, and maybe tell you about a video if you read long enough. Oh yeah, and before I forget I’ll obviously be comparing all my sources with the criteria of the great research wizard himself, Bruce Ballenger.
The first link I visited was an espn.com profile detailing the roots of the NBA’s age limit rule. It mentioned some pretty interesting facts that I never really knew about.
For instance, the NBA originally required players to be four years out of high school up until 1971 when a Supreme Court case involving a player named Spencer Haywood had that rule thrown out, so that Haywood could enter the league after just three years out of high school.
While a couple players after the decision decided to attempt the jump straight from high school to the pros, it was relatively rare until the mid 90’s. Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, two future hall-of-famers, became trend-setters in ’95 and ’96 for taking on the challenge. What followed them was a mixed bag of comparable talents and aspiring copycats; some ready for the spotlight, others wilting like sunflowers in the desert.
This was the NBA’s public statement as to why they instituted the age limit:" to protect some of these young, immature players from themselves." However, the colleges seem to have mixed opinions about it. The programs that get the top-notch pro ready players obviously love the rule because they make oodles of money off the exposure that player brings to the school, but the problems stem from the fact that many players think they’re that guy when really they aren’t. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski says that the rule adds to the sport’s instability because of the increase in transfers, noting that “for the one-and-done guys the next step is the NBA, but for others they think the best option is another school.” The NCAA has also instituted new rules taking effect this season, where schools are punished for poor academic rates with postseason tournament bans. These can easily hurt schools that take too many risks on potential high talent players. Coaches are working to come up with a potential solution to the rule, but there is no clear answer yet.
I know that seemed like a lot to write for “informal”, but that was just a really good article, and it aced Professor Ballenger’s criteria for me because ESPN is one of the most trusted journalistic names in sports; especially with its online editorial coverage. The author also has a bunch of other stuff on the site.
The other article was alright, and it was from Yahoo! sports. I’ll cover the all-important Ballenger criteria first to get it out of the way. The author’s picture looks like he just stumbled out of the frat house into covering high school sports for Yahoo!, one of the biggest companies on the internet. He probably did. Yahoo! Is a good place to read the news sometimes, but not necessarily where I’d go all the time for sports.
The article itself talked about how the current high school stars are calling for an end to the rule. They cite the torn ACL suffered by last year’s top overall prospect Nerlens Noel in his lone college season this year with Kentucky. It includes a quote from Dakari Johnson, the player slated to take Noel’s spot next year, where the incoming freshman states explicitly, “I’m concerned”. The author also makes the point that the year in school becomes less justifiable when one considers it’s the NCAA and the NBA that benefit anything from the rule, never the players.
On the picture front, I discovered a couple good pictures I think are pretty cool and relate to the project. They definitely can go on the blog, so that’s cool too. The first picture shows Kentucky coach John Calipari at a press conference with his record 5 “one-and-done” players declaring their intentions to enter the professional ranks. The other picture shows superstars Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony playing against one another in high school. James would go straight to the pros, while Anthony would only stay one year in college, collecting a national title on the way.
I also found a great video on Youtube of a CBS interview with Coach Calipari, the number one user and abuser of the rule, where he details why he actually hates the rule and doesn’t have a problem exploiting a broken system if not just to prove that it’s broken.
You know who else would love this video? Bruce Ballenger. The words are coming straight from the source of one of the rule’s figureheads, as well as under interview conditions with a major network such as CBS. CBS gets no benefits out of telling him to say anything. They get their benefits just by having him on there.
I’ll stop here. This research got too formal for my liking. I apologize.
"Hey thanks for the wins guys, I'll go pick up my salary raise, and you all go get yours"
"Melo, you do that chemistry homework?"
Blog Post #3 - April 11th, 2013
After my presentation in class on Tuesday, it had me feeling pretty good. I noticed the main thing I really had trouble with was not wanting to look like the weird dude who already did so much research. I think that’s still how I ended up looking.
As far as extending the conversation on the NBA age limit rule, I think the way that I’d like to attack it is by showing that the rule basically just exploits the players, while the NCAA and the NBA rake in all the added revenue. In other words, I’m inquiring into how this rule seems to be money based, and essentially all the negative side effects of it go ignored by the governing bodies. I feel good about this project, and since I’m legitimately interested in my topic I expect to have fun putting it together. Other than that, no worries yet.
Blog Post #4 - April 18th, 2013
At this point in my research I’ve began thinking about how I plan on extending the conversation with my topic. To do this, I jotted down a few of the different viewpoints I’d been picking up on throughout my research of the age limit rule.
Some people see the rule as beneficial because they feel it pushes kids towards an education, some agree with what the NBA states as its reasoning (that the rule protects young, immature teenagers from themselves), and others on the opposite end of the topic feel that the rule should not only force kids to wait one year out of high school, but possibly even two or three years.
However, when I picked the research apart for myself, I came to a conclusion that this rule doesn't make sense and needs to go. It was put in place strictly as a “cash grab” for the NBA and certain select high-level athletic NCAA universities. I believe that the extra money generated for these institutions would do just fine in these kids’ pockets straight out of high school; plus they likely need it more.
That’s where my input comes into this conversation. Upon reaching this conclusion, and reading our Lord and Savior Bruce Ballenger’s research guide, it became clear that I’m on track to produce a fine piece of argumentative research (At least I hope it’s fine). Armed with this knowledge, my research and I will embark on an adventure through the “Question-Claim” structure of organizing inquiry papers, hoping to reach the other side. I didn’t feel the need to include tiny little facts of research that I found because I didn’t think that was applicable to the meaning of this post.
It's all about the money
Blog Post #5 - April 30th, 2013
Writing this inquiry paper has really shown me that I enjoy doing these types of things. I learned lots of cool stuff about my topic that maybe I didn’t know before, but most of all I just had a fun time doing it. Usually, these types of assignments bore the hell out of me. I feel like this one may have been different because I was able to write about sports, which have always been one of my biggest interests; if not the biggest. I finally found out that you can make these types of assignments fun if you can put your own personality into it.
The digital essay format that I used for my project turned out to be the best possible choice I could have made. When I referred to certain players I was able to link to clips of what they looked like playing in high school, to give readers the idea of what the “uber-talented” type of player I kept referring to actually looked like. I was able to use the links and pictures to illustrate my essay, and interject my sense of humor into it. The strong tone I used was mainly because the inquiry was done in the argumentative format. I was making the argument that the NBA’s age limit makes no sense, and is simply all about the money. That was my way of wedging myself into the ongoing conversation. All in all it was a good time.
Bruce's
"Research Bible"