The Point of No Return

College players in all sports lose their NCAA eligibility after signing with an agent and accepting money to turn professional. Many are led to believe that they will be drafted high with a great team and sign fat contracts worth millions of dollars. There are projections by the “experts” that indeed they will be taken somewhere in the first round.

For college basketball players, what happens if those projections were wrong and that player has a bad day at one of the pre draft workouts or get injured? What if they suddenly realize that they are not as good as they thought and that another year or two in college wouldn’t be a bad idea after all?

Their stock drops like a hot rock and they find themselves off the NBA radar and taken either as a late draft pick with no guarantee that they’ll make the team, or they aren’t taken at all.

Their options are to scramble and try to sign on as a free agent, sign on in the NBA Development League playing in places like Bakersfield, Sioux Falls or Tulsa, or go to Europe and never heard from again.

College basketball players have the option of making themselves eligible for the draft, but not signing with an agent this year until June 16. After that they can either withdraw from the draft and go back to school with their remaining eligibility intact.

Rest assured, there are going to be plenty of disappointed players who thought and were told they were going to be called by NBA Commissioner David Stern only to have their hopes dashed on draft day on June 26.

And once that happens they can’t go back to college and play again.

It’s not that the coaches, teammates and the school in general wouldn’t want them back. I’m sure they’d be welcomed with open arms. But the reality is that they can’t go home again simply because they signed with an agent and accepted money.

My questions here is should there be another stipulation or rule change of some sort for players who sign with an agent, but are not drafted? Should they be given the chance to go back to school? What if the player gives back all the money they accepted from the agent in exchange for their remaining college eligibility?

After all, it’s not like they actually suited up and played a few games in the NBA. And maybe after the humbling experience of finding out that they are not quite NBA material yet, that will encourage them to rethink their goals, go back to school and maybe – just maybe take advantage of the free college education they’re receiving.