The NCAA & The Pros...sporting pimps

Three posts in one day??? Only becuase I have a lot on my mind...
I have a problem with the powers that be telling athletes, hey you have to go to college or wait at least a predeterminate amount of time before you can apply to be enter a pro draft. This rule mainly applys to the basketball and football ranks. I call it the Lebron and OJ rule. The NBA under increasing pressure and lobbying from the NCAA has mandated that a person cannot enter the NBA draft until one year after they have graduated high school a minimum age of 19. So even if a player graduated from high school at the age of 19, he would still have to wait a year to enter the NBA draft. In other words he would have to go to college. I think this is hypocrisy. The pros claim that they are thinking of the players best interest and that for every Kevin Garnett, Lebron James and Kobe Bryant success story there is a Korleone Young, Leon Smith and Kwame Brown bust or flop. But then again how many heralded players went through college and could not make the jump to the pros? For every Tim Duncan, Kenyon Martin and Emeka Okefor four year players that made good, there are a number of players that played four years in the NCAA and flopped as pros. The NBA claims that they are trying to protect players, they are more afraid of themselves throwing big money at young black men...yes I said it. If the NCAA can make some money off of these man-children for even a year, thats money that they don' t to give the players and control that they have. If the player gets hurt, especially a player that could have jumped to the pros otherwise it would be just a tool for the school to keep that player, scaring pro prospects off with the injury and benefitting from the players recovery.
If a person was a world class scholar, and there were numerous companies wanting their services and talents, no one would bemoan the fact that they would skip college or drop out to pursue monetary gain. No one says a word about teenage gymnasts or junior golf players or tennis players. All that is said is that they need to make the next step. If a player is talented to make the move they should be able to make it. True its very different in the NFL where a person going from high school to the pros is impossible given the amount of growth that the players do in three years. A player can declare hardship and become draft eligible but only after their three years removed from the their high school graduation. It makes sense, but there are exceptions. Mike Williams should not have been punished for declaring himself eligible after his sophomore season in the wake of the Maurice Clarett rulings, a ruling that was later overturned. Williams basing his declaration on the ruling, was the unwitting victim and then was told that he could not be reinstated, even though he had not taken any money from an agent. Williams sat out a year and was drafted by the Detroit Lions. Clarett...his sad tale is a blog topic in himself. But I rail against the pimping of college players, if a person wants to be in school for a year or four or not at all, they should be allowed to make that choice themselves. The NCAA fears that that if the NBA creates a real developmental league where players can go straight from high school with pay, that they will be locked out of the cash cow business and that the days of sold out arenas full of people cheering for the "alma mater" will go the way of the Edsel and dinosaur. That though they talk so much of the "student-athlete" the only folks playing will be the people who just want to play ball and you couldn't make money off of that could you??? There would be no one to pimp out.