by Jalen Rose
Now, let me ask you a question: You just read those two paragraphs. Did you make any value judgments on one versus the other? Did you think to yourself, it’s better when college basketball stars go to school for four years rather than leave after just one? Did you think to yourself, it was better when the sneaker companies weren’t massive, all-powerful corporations? Did you think that coaches were more genuine when they were recruiting kids for longer stints at school? Do you have this sense that the new world order in college basketball is somehow dirtier?
Maybe you do, maybe you don’t—I shouldn’t be accusing you of anything. But I think it is fair to say that a lot of people who follow sports, and definitely a lot of people who write and comment on sports like their sports to be pure and virtuous. They like to feel that something like college basketball is part of a greater educational mission. And a big reason they feel that way is that that’s how the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the NCAA, sells itself, with graphics and features promoting academic All-Americans during the television broadcasts, and all kinds of other references to scholarships and academics. What they aren’t marketing is their billion-dollar deal to televise March Madness. What they don’t want you to think is what I told you before: It’s all about the money.
Now, I don’t have any problem with the truth. Coca-Cola is all about the money. General Motors is all about the money. Why should the sports world—even the college sports world—be any different? Because universities are nonprofits? Tell that to the chancellors who make six and seven figures, and the alumni who get letters every week asking for more donations. I can’t say it enough: What drives everything about college sports, and certainly the recruiting, is the money.
Today, more money than ever before.
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SONNY VACCARO was the original sneaker guy. Sonny worked for everyone at one point or another—Nike, Adidas, Reebok—and basically created an entire industry based on young basketball players wearing sneakers and, ultimately, the best of them becoming the faces of those brands when they turned pro. Sonny’s signature deal was signing Michael Jordan to Nike in 1984, when Jordan left North Carolina for the NBA. And what’s most important to understand is how long it took to get that deal done. Not a few days or weeks or even months of negotiations. No, it was years and years of work.
Sonny’s job (and he really invented the job) was to connect kids, coaches, and schools with the shoe companies as early as possible. College was a big part of that, but even more so was high school. So he linked up with the schools and coaches that had the best talent—for example, Southwestern and Perry Watson. Southwestern was getting Nike stuff for years before I got there. Remember those white hats I told you about that I saw at the fairgrounds? Well, the Southwestern players also had the matching shoes, big Nikes with the “Nike” written big on the back of the shoes. That was definitely part of the appeal of going there and playing on the team—which of course fed into the winning atmosphere. What—it sounds dirty to you? High school kids who couldn’t afford sneakers getting free sneakers to play in? What if the theater club was sponsored by a local theater and got costumes to use in their plays? Or the marching band got new snare drums paid for by the city orchestra?
Now, here’s the important thing that was different in my day: Southwestern was going to be a Nike school regardless of where any of us went to college. Sonny Vaccaro or Nike wasn’t going to be involved in my decision to go to Michigan or wherever. Sonny was doing his job if the best high school players in Detroit were wearing Nike and making Nike cool all throughout the city. That’s why they always use that term grassroots. It was grassroots basketball and grassroots marketing.
Today, though, it’s all changed. The grassroots idea is gone. Today, if a school like Southwestern is a Nike school, and a coach like Perry Watson is getting gear from Nike, and a top recruit decides to go to an Adidas-sponsored college team, Nike’s going to be upset. They want their player to stay Nike all the way through. They think of him as one of their employees, or, maybe even more accurately, one of their products. If Nike gets upset, they might decide not to sponsor Southwestern anymore. Which means no more Nike gear for Perry’s teams, and one less thing to entice a young kid to come to the school.
Unless of course Adidas comes in after I sign with the Adidas school, and says, Perry, we’ll take care of you, we’ll give you Adidas gear, but keep in mind, your next star had better go to an Adidas school. Or else you’ll be right back where you started.
You see why Perry Watson would rather be on a golf course in Florida than trying to do right by his players in this atmosphere?
But me? I’m on the other end. I wish it had been like this when I was playing. Because think of who has all the power in that situation: The player. The talent. Here’s how I see it: The Superfriends would have been sponsored by a shoe company starting when I was twelve. And then I would have been steered into a high school sponsored by the same company. Once I established myself as a young star, the shoe company would have given my mom and my uncles and my brothers tons of free stuff and, hey, if they needed them, even jobs. They’d send someone to advise me, to get in my ear, connect me with pro players and even celebrities on the phone, make me feel great. Probably tell me to “grayshirt,” or hold myself back a year in school, so I got another year of physical growth and maturity on everyone else, to make me even more dominant as high school continued. Then the shoe company, through some sort of fixer or street agent, would have guided me to that one-year college stop-off with a school, and a coach, affiliated with that same sneaker company. And then finally, at the ripe old age of nineteen, when I got drafted, at last I could sign the seven-, eight-, or even nine-figure endorsement deal that I’d been promised, wink-wink, over a handshake, way back when I first hooked up with the company. Oh, right, plus whatever couple of million I’m going to get from my actual NBA team.
It’s just like the Wayans brothers used to say on In Living Color, right?
Mo’ money mo’ money mo’ money…
Really, to me, there’s only one thing dirty, or unfair, or unjust about that whole deal. That I can’t get paid until I turn pro! Though I’m sure the big companies can find ways to get that money to my family somehow along the way, right?
Ladies and gentlemen, amateurism at its finest!
And we’ve only barely touched the NCAA.
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BEING A top-flight college coach these days is a tricky proposition. Not that it was ever easy to chase the best players and try and recruit them to your program, but now the top talents are just there for one year before they take off on you. If they don’t take off on you, in fact, then something went drastically wrong—because that means they weren’t as good as you hoped they’d be. Then, of course, you’ve got everything we just went over—the influence of the shoe companies in everything you do, and all the players you go after.
So after a coach’s list of potential recruits gets whittled down based on who’s wearing what shoes, the main difference in the recruiting process is that it’s a lot less personal than it used to be. Remember, Coach Fisher and Coach Dutcher came to Juwan Howard’s grandmother’s funeral before he ever played a single game at Michigan. The reason they came was that they legitimately cared about the kid. Believe me, if anything else were the case, we would have seen through it.
Today, the best recruiter in the game is Coach Cal at Kentucky. The best thing about John is that he’s not a phony. He’s not trying to sell anyone any fake notion of “student-athlete.” He treats his program at Kentucky like a trade school: He’s going to bring a kid in and train him to be a basketball player. That’s how he gets nine McDonald’s All-Americans on one roster. It’s effective and successful because it’s realistic. Kentucky teams remind me of the Fab Five—great players choosing to go to school together and play together.
Today, all college coaches need to speak the kids’ language. What are you going to do to keep my pro plans on track? Well, check out
our amazing facilities—our weight room, our film room, our lounge. Our barbershop. Our private plane that we take to games. Then there might be other expectations. Like, the player’s family wants to move with him to the college town—can the school hook up a job for the dad, or the mom, either in the program or in a local business nearby? You bet they can. That’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s more prevalent today than it was when I was getting recruited. It has to be. Because there’s more money, and more money means more people doing more of whatever they have to do to succeed.
All this change has had a big impact on the college game, and most of all the NCAA Tournament in March. Because you have these top-flight schools stocked with freshman superstars, and then other teams, the midmajors and the somewhat smaller programs, playing with guys who aren’t top recruits and therefore stay in school for three and four years. Those schools, lesser-known possible Cinderellas, have a better shot than ever before in the tourney. They’re more experienced, and older, and can use those advantages in trying to knock off the freshman phenoms. The dynamic is kind of an unintentional consequence, but it’s what’s happened all the same.
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FINE. EVEN if part of me wishes players could get paid before they actually turn pro, if we’re going to be real, we have to acknowledge that there are downsides to everything. Like players getting pampered and treated like stars before they hit puberty. That can’t be good for the process of learning how to play well with other stars and how to become a winner. When you’re young, you need to be put in your place…you need to learn the hard way. Like I did getting my butt kicked by Uncle Paramore in video games, getting run through boot camp by Tony Jones, and then learning the game, and the game of life, from Coach Watson. As I said earlier, if I had been around during today’s system, who knows what would have happened to my career. And even more important, what would have happened to me in the game of life? The guidance I had at that young age was paramount to my getting to where I am today.
Ultimately, in places like Detroit, it’s important to have local influences like Perry. If coaches like him don’t have control of their players, and their teams, then they’re not going to be able to maintain the necessary influence to remain leaders at their schools, in their communities. That influence is central to getting their young athletes on the path to an education. Dozens and dozens of Perry’s players went on to college. A few got a shot at the pros. More important, many more got other opportunities thanks to the education. Now, in Detroit today there are no Perry Watsons. There are no Ed Martins either. There’s no one to guide the talent. I’m trying to offer a counter to the often-bleak reality with the tuition-free charter school I founded there, and there are a few other folks fighting the good fight with me, but too much has changed for it to ever really go back to what it was.
Beyond just Detroit, the old system was better for the game overall, the majority of the players. Perry Watson was an individual who could handle the responsibility of getting free stuff from sneaker companies and also looking out for his kids. Sonny Vaccaro was an individual who could handle looking to make money for his employer and also wanting the best for the kids who came to his ABCD Nike camps. Sonny is a genuine good dude. I still am friends with him and his wife, Pam. If a kid wasn’t going to make it to the pros, or even a Division I program, Sonny would have been happy to hear that his camp maybe got the kid a shot at a DII or DIII program.
It always has been all about the money. But in my day, there was room for a lot more other good stuff as well. That helped raise all the players up, not just the superstars.
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SO WHAT would I change about the recruiting system today? Well, if a kid can play one year in college, and then get tens of millions of dollars from a shoe company, who am I to institute some “system” that will prevent a young man who has talent and value in the corporate world from getting what he deserves? But while that may actually be fairer to a young superstar, it’s not nearly as good for the guys at the levels below him. That’s true in college ball, high school, and AAU competition.
The core issue here is the current age limit, which forces players to go to college for a year and therefore spend another year not getting paid for playing basketball. As I write this, it seems like there’s a consensus to raise the limit one more year—to twenty. There will be a bunch of problems with that. And it’s also hypocritical, especially since the top four players in the 2015 draft were all nineteen years old.
First, when it was established, the age limit was not for the LeBron Jameses or Kobe Bryants of the world, but for players who don’t really have the skills to jump right into the league and succeed. Does anyone really think LeBron or Kobe would have turned out to be better players if they were forced to play in college for a year? Or if Kevin Durant or Carmelo Anthony had to play for two years? Those players aren’t the issue.
Also because of the age limit, there’s a ton of grayshirting going on. And so after young athletes get held back when they’re younger, they graduate from high school as stars when they’re nineteen. Some maybe at twenty. So what happens then? Even if they haven’t gone to college, should they be eligible to join the pros?
Look, in theory, it’s America. There should be no restrictions, and players should be able to do whatever they want—free market. But if I’m trying to make both games—pro and college—better, here’s what I say: Make it a rule that if you go to college, you have to stay for two years. Then, as an alternative, also let players opt out completely and declare for the NBA draft out of high school. One or the other—enter the draft, or sign a letter of intent. That lets the next Andrew Wigginses and Jabari Parkers start making money immediately but also protects the next tier of players from their own temptations, assuming they’re smart enough to choose college. It’ll be on the college coaches to convince them that college for two years is the best choice for them. If not, they’ll end up in the NBA Development League, or Europe, and that’s not the worst thing.
Let’s go back a step to high school and AAU ball. AAU gets a bad rap for a lot of reasons. One is legitimate: the sleazy characters that are involved with programs that seem to pop up out of nowhere, with no affiliation to schools or community centers or churches. It’s the Wild West, with guys who care much more about the shoe companies than the interests of kids. Still, don’t hate on AAU ball. It’s been a core part of competitive development for the best players in the world for generations. So I’d rather we eliminate the bad things that have developed in AAU without sacrificing the good aspects.
Obviously not every coach or teacher is going to be Perry Watson, but the more accountable mentors you put in a kid’s life, the better chance they are going to turn out to be better people, and better players. And that’s good for everyone—the kids, the parents, and, ultimately, the NCAA and the NBA. Make AAU coaches get certified through the schools, and keep their teams connected to the schools, or churches, or community centers. The best way to make sure that programs are legitimate is to keep them tied to legitimate institutions and leadership. When I was in high school, our Southwestern team had an AAU component that would compete in tournaments. When we went to a national tournament in Vegas, we took Chris Webber with us and the rest of our normal roster. When we played a team of pros from the Soviet Union as seniors, Juwan actually played with us. It all ran through guys like Perry and Tony Jones at Southwestern and other great coaches like Curtis Hervey with the Superfriends, and Rocky Watkins and Glover Ernest at Michigan AAU. All good dudes who had the respect of the community.
The basketball world has evolved a lot in the last twenty-five years. It’s still a world that means a lot to me.
After all, the Fab Five revolutionized it.
4. The Revolution
In March of 2011, when we produced the Fab Five documentary for ESPN, the highlight for me wasn’t our big rating. Or being recognized for the impact we’d had on basketball and culture. Or even the idea that a whole new generation of kids who
’d only kind of heard of us got a chance to see what we were all about. No, to me, the best part, bar none, was the controversy. All the people getting upset about what we said about Duke—including, by the way, my good friend Grant Hill himself, who wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times about it. Yeah, that got the film more attention, which was great. But the real reason I loved it was that it made me feel like people actually hated us again.
In sports, no matter how controversial you are, once enough time passes, the edge disappears, and you go from being divisive to being fondly remembered. Fans who vilified you for what you stood for seem to forget about all that and pretend they always were your biggest supporters. I’m all about the love, and there’s nothing I appreciate more than when I get stopped on the street by someone who wants to talk basketball or reminisce about the Final Fours. But to me, the significance of what the Fab Five accomplished lies in the people who didn’t like us, the people we made uncomfortable, the people who were forced to confront a new reality when we came on the scene. It was nice to have that back for a while.
The most obvious instance of time’s dulling the haters in sports is Muhammad Ali. He spent his career taking stands that were unpopular with almost all of America: joining the Nation of Islam and changing his name, refusing to join the army and to go to Vietnam. He paid for it dearly at the time, only to be crowned a “legend” once he retired and began to suffer from Parkinson’s disease. By that point he wasn’t nearly as threatening as he once was to a lot of people.
Ali actually holds a special place in the hearts of the Fab Five. In 1992, before our first NCAA Tournament game, in Atlanta, it turned out he was staying in the same hotel as us. And at the time, he actually lived in Michigan, on a farm near Lake Michigan, across the state from Detroit. He knew who we were, was a big fan of ours, and wanted to meet us. We were invited to his suite in the hotel, and he was messing around with us there, doing these magic tricks that he kind of became famous for as a way to communicate with people when speaking became difficult. But he could definitely still talk when he really wanted to talk, and he knew our names (Muhammad Ali knew our names! Uncle Paramore would have been impressed), and he gave us a bit of advice. “Don’t stop being confident,” he said. “Don’t stop being cocky. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing.
