Sometime today or tomorrow David Stern is going to rule on the curious case of Isiah Thomas and his “consulting” position with the New York Knicks. It appears that the Knicks did not get the league’s input nor permission before offering the position to Isiah and they have some questions. Turns out they are not the only ones. All over the country, coaches both from the NBA, and from the NCAA are asking the obvious question, does this not seem a little bit like a conflict of interest? The funny thing is that the NBA is asking the question and not the NCAA.
The NCAA has reportedly signed off on the whole affair and said it violates no existing NCAA standards. Well, slap my butt and call me baby. How can an existing NCAA Div I coach giving advice to an NBA team not represent a conflict of interest? Thomas, while only coaching Florida International, is not going to have a wealth of info at his fingertips unless it is provided to him by other coaches wishing to get an “inside track” for their players hopes of NBA stardom, unless he actually sees those players play. Scouts do this folks. Why Thomas? As much as it loathes me to agree with Coach K over at Duke there is seemingly a “can of worms” here that is about to be opened up. We are already reeling from scandal after scandal concerning recruiting and unapproved benefits to players, and now a coach is going to help tell an NBA team who to draft and trade for? I can not, for the life of me, understand why the NCAA is not all over this like a dog on a T-Bone. This is just more evidence of the fact that the NCAA is no longer a viable entity for collegiate athletics. And to put David Stern in charge of doing what is right for the other collegiate athletes in this country is absurd, which in effect, they have.
We already have agents and runners and advisors all over the place doing God only knows what, and now they want to let a coach do a little “consulting” on the side?
We are living in a time where collegiate athletics is referred to by almost everyone as a business. It reminds me of the line by John Matuzak in North Dallas Forty where he tries to remove Charles Durning’s head and screams at him because as the Tuz puts it, “every time we call it a game you call it a business, and every time we call it a business, you call it a game”. Hard to believe that a line in a movie written 25 years ago would be so prophetic. Someone has got to wake everyone up at the NCAA. They cannot spend every waking moment going after the kids, when all of the adults around them are raiding the chicken house. March Madness is no longer the appropriate term. It needs to be NCAA Madness, because it is infecting every crack and crevice of everything in college athletics. And no one seems to know the cure.
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