ACC Wants 10 Day Limit on Draft Decisions

Something tells me Roy Williams has been talking John Swofford up on this.

The ACC plans to propose NCAA legislation that would force men’s basketball underclassmen to decide within seven to 10 days after the NCAA title game whether they are leaving for the NBA draft. ACC officials are considering submitting the proposal to the NCAA board of directors meeting Thursday; otherwise, they will propose the idea in July.

Under the legislation, “there would be no grace period – either you’re in or you’re out,” said Karl Hicks, the ACC’s associate commissioner for basketball operations. “We feel that’s what would work best for the student athletes and that’s what would work best for the coaches.”

The change would significantly shorten the time coaches and players have to wait on pins and needles to know their respective futures. Last season, for instance, the national championship game was played April7. Under NBA rules, underclassmen had until April27 to submit their names for the draft. If they didn’t hire agents, they had until June16 to withdraw.

Players couldn’t actually work out with prospective teams until the pre-draft camp in late May. Meanwhile, the spring period to sign basketball recruits began April16 – without college coaches knowing whether they had any scholarships to offer.

Roy has made no bones about the fact that the whole “testing the water” process pretty much ruined his summer.  There is merit to the argument.  Coaches have to sit around, twiddling their thumbs for 10 weeks while this process plays out.  Meanwhile they have no idea who they will have back nor what scholarships they will have available.  What is interesting is the degree this completely undermines the whole pre-draft process as a means of gathering information so players can make informed decisions.  Players will have to commit without the information they can get now by going to camps and workouts.  It will pretty much reset the state of the process to where it was a few years ago when you were either in or out.

And let’s call a spade, a spade, this legislation is designed to benefit the coaches who are trying to run a program.  Roy, K and others really do not enjoy being hamstrung until the middle of June wondering if their star point guard is coming back or not.  The intent here is to cut through the crap and get these decisions resolved very close to the end of the season rather than months later so life can go on.  And in response to that argument you will likely see something like this:

What about the kids?  You are hurting the kids!  They will make horrid and ill-informed decisions because NBA GMs are immensely stupid in how they use their draft picks.  You need to make sure these kids have plenty of feedback to make an informed decision.

What’s funny is in football the deadline is basically 7-10 days after the BCS title game.  I never hear a hue and cry over football players making ill-advised decisions.  Maybe the fact those players need to wait three years out of high school before they can enter the draft means 10 weeks of workouts is largely unnecessary to determine a player’s stock.  Imagine that.  Using the college game to develop and evaluate players for the next level.  Seems to work pretty well for the NFL.  Baseball too.  Something tells me this legislation is intended to force the NBA’s hand on the age limit.

And I think it has zero chance of passing.

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