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Message: [QUOTE="billsin01, post: 1753983, member: 837"] I like this post but would still be largely in disagreement here. For one, I'm not even sure it would hurt college hoops that much. If you told me that the top 75 high school players would be drafted into an NBA farm system each year, but the players who went to college would need to stay for three years (a setup somewhat similar to MLB), I'm not sure the quality of basketball would actually dip all that much. Talent level? Yes. Quality of basketball with teams that actually have some potential to stick together for multiple years and talent that is actually allowed to develop? I think that actually improves over what we're generally seeing. I used to cover the really good summer leagues down here in the DC/Balt. area and you always loved seeing the big prospects come out and do their thing. But the teams that actually won those summer leagues and often played the best basketball, quite often didn't have the top stars. Same thing in high school football in this area -- from a public school standpoint PG county has some phenomenal athletes but they'd run into Urbana or Linganore from Frederick County and get absolutely smacked. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. The second point I disagree with is the not being compensated. If you actually value the education (not saying you have to, simply saying that if you do value it), you're talking about not only however many thousands of dollars it's worth, but the future value as well (the 2008 census data said the individual with a college diploma made an average of nearly $58K, while one with a high school diploma was around $34K). Add to that the cache of being a celebrity on campus and all the networking that potentially comes with being tied to a big time program like that ... Anyway, point is, it may not be all the compensation these kids are entitled to (I'd argue it is for most players) but it's a pretty fair amount of compensation all told. [/QUOTE]

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