Taking His Ball and Going…to Europe?

The speculation was that Brandon Jennings, the freakish athlete you see above, was headed to the University of Arizona to play college ball. But thanks to the NBA’s age minimum, top prospects now have to do their missionary work on college campuses under the charade of getting an education. While we all know Jennings would have only been a Wildcat for a year, tops, before turning pro and becoming filthy rich, we all have to pretend as if this isn’t partly — largely — about money for the school and big-time TV contracts and instead about getting an education. The NCAA gets to essentially serve as a farm league to the NBA, while NBA teams get to draft dazzling young talents who essentially come to the pros as branded regional stars with large fan bases after an intriguing season or two in college.

But Jennings, the top high school point guard prospect in the nation, has indicated that he might not want to play that game. Instead, he said, he might go play professionally overseas for a year and be paid, and come back to play in the NBA when he meets their age requirements.

Bill Rhoden:

“For a person that plays ball, our dream is to get to the N.B.A.,” Jennings said. “College is like, O.K., we’ll do this one year, but our real mind-set is that we’re trying to get to the league, take care of our families. They’re making us do college so we feel like, Let’s do one year, go to class half the time.”

Jennings could play a role in redirecting the pipeline that carries N.B.A.-ready talent from high school to college, in which the best players are forced to mark time for a season. There are not many options.

A player could go to the N.B.A. development league. He would be eligible to play in the league because he is a high school graduate, but he couldn’t be called up to an N.B.A. roster. He would become eligible for the N.B.A. draft the next season.

Jennings will receive his test scores on Thursday. He’ll huddle with his mother, Alice, to determine whether to go to Arizona for the obligatory year or go to Europe to begin his pro career.

What’ll it be: Spain or Paris, or Tucson? Being compensated —half a million to a million Euros, or receiving room, board, tuition and a telephone book of N.C.A.A. regulations?

He would come into the N.B.A. with money and maturity after having lived abroad for a season or two. This is true education, the kind of education an elite college basketball or football player will be hard pressed to receive inside forced study halls, where the primary objective is to stay eligible.

What, exactly, would be the downside to this? There are players who would go the overseas route, not pan out, and end up having their weaknesses exposed enough to not stick in the League. But that happens all the time in the college ranks (Terrence Morris is the first name that springs to mind).

Would Shaun Livingston, the oft-injured L.A. Clippers point guard prodigy who was one of the last players to make the high-school-to-pro jump, have been better off having gone to college and risking an injury that would have literally cost him millions of dollars in earnings? Or was he better off going pro, in which he’s already made $14 million in guaranteed money through his first contract?

Compare that with the head-scratchingly draconian NCAA rules, where Chris Porter can lose his eligibility to play college ball and his scholarship after accepting money to keep his mother from being evicted from her home because, you know, he’s supposed to be an amateur student-athlete. Meanwhile, top college coaches are routinely paid millions of dollars (Tom Izzo is almost certainly the highest-paid employee on the payroll of the state of Michigan).

We ain’t mad at you, Brandon.