More Reactions To The Rice Commission

CBS’s Matt Norlander spoke to several coaches about the Rice Commission report about college basketball.

He spoke to Indiana’s Archie Miller, Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, St. Joseph’s Phil Martelli and Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin.

Miller expressed some career concerns because, he says, guys are fired for not making the tournament but it’s really difficult to know what your roster is going to be fairly late in the year thanks to the large number of players hoping to be drafted.

There are two points we’d like to make here.

First, the NBA thing could be tempered if the NBA simply invited underclassmen who they thought had a serious shot of being drafted or being picked up as free agents. This would probably be about 40-60 players. Keep in mind that most years now about ¹⁄₃ of the players drafted are international and there are also seniors who are worth looking at.

If you’re not invited, you can still leave and try for the G-League or play overseas.

And second, if Miller thinks things are crazy now, what’s going to happen if the NCAA actually does eliminate the requirement to sit out a year when you transfer?

The other guys he spoke to mostly seem at least cautiously optimistic about the proposed reforms.

Out in the Sunflower State, both Bill Self and Bruce Weber (Kansas and Kansas State coaches, respectively) are at least partly supportive although Self’s statement is pretty meaningless: “We appreciate their time and efforts on this project. The recommendations by the commission will create further discussions and implementations that will lead to significant changes for the good of our game in the near future.”

He should run for office. He’s a natural.

Art Chansky offers a UNC-centric response and says that Bubba Cunningham was not happy about UNC being singled out in the report (although by deed, not by name).

Well what on earth do they expect? It’s over, they got away with it, blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t mean that everyone has to accept it, much less forget about it. Everyone knows what they did and it’s going to take a while to forget it.

Cunningham issued a statement after the report blistered UNC, saying, rather blandly, this (we’ll have to take Chansky’s word for his anger): “Our case showed the many complexities of academic issues, and it was a long and exhaustive process. We learned a lot, and if asked, we will participate in the discussion examining future academic guidelines. Every case is different, and ours was decided by the applicable NCAA bylaws.”

Nothing personal, Bubba, but most people don't want to learn what you have to teach, assuming UNC is back in the teaching business. We’re not sure about that. You know that renewed UNC commitment to academic performance? Yeah.

Incidentally, maybe someone could point out to the Daily Tar Heel that if you’re going to write about academics you might want to proofread a bit (see the chart).