Guest post by Hoop Jones

Amateur basketball is big business. From multibillion dollar companies like Nike, millionaire coaches like John Calipari, colleges, high schools, and everybody else from entrepreneurial recruiting experts to shady characters like Rodney Guillory — everyone is getting paid from their involvement with amateur basketball.

Everyone, that is, except the players themselves. Is it really any surprise to see that O.J. Mayo took some money after spending the last five years of his life watching people cash in on him time after time? Do you really think that Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley or the people around them weren’t cashing in on the fact that in less than a year they were going to be millionaires? Granted they probably didn’t come away with $30,000 in cash and gifts like Mayo, but who do you think paid for the three cell phones Beasley was carrying around all year?

Plain and simple, the age limit is good for the NBA because it allows elite players to spend one year in college as an apprentice while getting an all-expenses paid publicity tour courtesy of CBS and ESPN. The year that OJ Mayo, Michael Beasley, and Derrick Rose spent in college made them household names to all basketball fans, not just the ones who closely follow college basketball recruiting or the AAU circuit. Next year, when they suit up for their new NBA teams, more people will recognize these players, which means more people will watch. Of course, this means the NBA makes more money.

The second advantage for the NBA of the age limit is it gives the NBA owners some protections from themselves. By forcing kids to go to college for at least a year it gives them more of a chance to get an accurate evaluation of them, instead of investing top-5 drafts picks on guys like Kwame Brown who jumped straight from high school but fell short of superstardom.

The flip side of this is that these guys are being forced to wait a year to become millionaires. Do you really think that they are going to turn down money or gifts that are offered to them because the NCAA says they can’t? This it the same NCAA that is making over 6 billion dollars off of the NCAA tournament. The NCAA (read College Presidents) is looking out solely for their financial interests, and are not at all concerned about overhauling a broken system that allows them to make billions of dollars on the backs of the athletes. You may disagree, but many people involved in the culture of youth basketball agree. As long as there is a age limit, there will be people — like Guillory — offering kids some of the money they feel like they should already be making.

In the short term, the NCAA will benefit from the marquee talent being forced to serve a one year apprenticeship, but it could come at the cost of destroying the credibility of college players as “student-athletes” as the announcers at NCAA tournament sites are so fond of calling them.