Invited by Mike and Mike to talk about the Penn St. NCAA penalties, Bob Knight made very few, and mostly ill-informed comments on that matter. But he ranted again, and extensively, against the "one-and-done" rule, insisting that the NCAA needs to do something about it. Here's The General:
I would like to see the NCAA direct it's efforts at something that has become a real blight on college athletics, and that's the one-and-done thing in basketball. It's time to turn basketball back ... and to give it back to college students. Let's have college students playing basketball in college with requirements to complete a degree or to complete a four-year period or let's look at that some way so that when the NCAA Tournament is over, players with eligibility left are continuing to play rather than become a one-and-done minor league for the NBA.
I appreciate Knight's position, I really do. I do wonder if he understands that there is absolutely no way the NCAA can do a thing about this? This has been rehashed a thousand times, and if the NCAA could fix this problem, Bob, don't you think they would have by now? Don't you think it's in their interests to force all these great players to stay for four years or whatever? Of course it is.
But this is America, not Communist China. We cannot deprive people of their freedom to associate by fiat. As much power as the NCAA usurped for itself yesterday (and Knight and I are in some level of agreement on this point), the power he is asking them to assert is foreclosed by our social compact and the courts. What he is insisting on is impossible, or it would have been done years ago.
Unless the NBA decides to change their rules through collective bargaining, something they've been trying to do for several years running without success, this call for the NCAA to step in and fix it is a massive display of situational ignorance. Can Knight really be this obtuse?