Travis Gowins
November 11, 2011
Rachael Hoy
WRD 110-018
The Impure Heart of Kentucky Basketball
To say the least, the University of Kentucky has one of the most historic college basketball programs in the nation. But something to take into account is the question of what has lead us to this remarkable success? Some would bring into account that we have seven national championships, the second most in the world of college basketball, others would say that we were the first to reach the milestone of recording 2,000 victories; I mean the list goes on and on.
Courtesy of http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1998/03/23/ukgamer23.html
However, I want to look deeper into the success we have every year, I think there is something further that dictates our success. The driving force I am speaking of is the players we sign to play at our school every year. In this essay, I will shine light on how education, pro potential, and benefits players are entitled to, attracts them to our school in order to show the side of UK basketball recruiting that the “Big Blue Nation” doesn’t see.
Recruitment goes much further than the high school level; it affects the college level and is even affected by the professional level of basketball. So, to jump right into this, I want to first explore the perspective of the high school player. No doubt there is a lot that they have to think about when picking a college to spend their next one-to-four years at, but I wanted to analyze the three main factors, which are seen by most as what the player wants as far as an education, the chances they have to be a player in the NBA through being publicized through their college play, and the benefits and expenses that will be covered for them in their lives at the college.
First, I want to get into the high school players perspective on education and how much of a factor it is in them deciding what school they will attend. I mean, they are being recruited for basketball, but at the end of the day these players are required to be full-time students and make grades in order to keep their eligibility to practice and play in games. So, is this a big deal for them?
I sat down with local Lexington native, Hays Cannon, a 22-year-old student at Georgetown University to ask him some questions to get a little more information on the subject of recruitment. Cannon, who will graduate with a degree in communication and media studies, has had experience in sports broadcasting with nationally acclaimed sportscasters such as Ahmad Rashad (NBC), Ian Eagle (CBS), and Bruce Beck (NBC and also a super bowl).
He has a list of credibility I can speak of, but for the sake of the topic, I shall proceed to analyze recruitment. I asked Cannon if he thought players made decisions based on the college they choose based on the education they will receive. He broke it down into three groups of high school basketball players that are being recruited. One group being the high school players whose family could be seen as financially stable, these players are looking to receive an education but are for the most part, going in to college with the doubt that they will make it to the NBA. Vice Versa, the group of elite players we see being recruited to the big named basketball schools such as UK and Kansas put education at close to the bottom of their list because they know they have the talent to be professional basketball players and generally want to take the shortest road they can to get to that level. Then, of course, you have your third group which consists of players who have variations of pro potential and the want of the education, one example of this would be Darius Miller. Miller has been a talent at UK and could have left after his sophomore and junior years but has decided to stay for his senior year and graduate before entering the NBA draft. In essence, you have different occasions of whether players want to be professional athletes whether it be for the money, fame, or the challenge; or you have players who want the education whether it be for the lack of their talents or just their inclination to get a degree.
To further my research in this, I want to look further in to the caliber of education the elite basketball player receives while in the college realm. To keep it relative, do you think Terrence Jones attends and gives the same effort in class as the full-time day-to-day student? In my opinion, no, I mean I don’t see Terrence as lazy or complacent as a student, I just can’t imagine someone of his prestige to be doing the same work as I do I guess as far as school work goes. I asked Hays if he thought basketball players at UK received the same caliber of education as your average everyday student. He made the point that, while no, they do not receive the same education as a normal student, they do receive better education than most other student athletes. Cannon then went on to say that they receive extra tutoring to suit their needs as students, but in terms of where they are on the road to the professional level, they are given the opportunity to practice seven days a week while still achieving class credits as a student. Hays also seemed to be confident in the fact that the players do not receive grades based on their position in the community of UK basketball. I must agree that I don’t believe professors would give the players grades based on being on the basketball team, but I also must say that the extra tutoring and other resources the players are given make it easier for them to focus on basketball rather than being concerned about their academic status.
As to what I have said about education, it seems that in most cases, these athletes are actually more concerned with their status as basketball players rather than students. I now want to further my analysis of the factors of recruitment by looking at the second main factor, the ability for these players to fulfill their destiny as professional athletes in the NBA; I refer to this as pro potential, or the potential to reach the professional level at a given institution.
Courtesy of http://blog.eastbay.com/all/sneaker-watch-nba-rookie-photoshoot/
This brings up the argument that players do not choose schools based on television exposure and that there must be something else involved in a programs potential to help get this elite talent drafted into the NBA in a first round pick. Therefore, I must conclude that the coaching a player receives at the University plays a major role in making them more desirable to teams in the NBA. Hays touched base on this as he said, “The ability John Calipari has to prepare these elite high school athletes for the NBA and the amount of players UK has put in the draft in the last 2 years is what makes them want to play for us.” (Cannon 2011) The role of the coaching can now be viewed as a key factor in the resume of a player with aspirations of being a basketball player in the NBA. www.grantland.com posted the players NBA scouting reports that played in the UK-UNC game after the game was over. One of the key things they rated our young freshmen on is their ability to be coached.I now make a call to consider, would an elite high school athlete decide to attend a college if he didn’t think his talents would be seen by the nation and NBA scouts through the media of televised broadcasting of the games they play in? I would assume not, especially as covered before, the elite talent want to make their mark and stand out in the nation for the feats they accomplish during the season in hopes to reach the NBA and improve their draft stock while doing it. I asked Cannon about his opinion on how the magnitude of pro potential at a University such as the one of Kentucky affects the high school player’s choice to attend. He said five years ago, it was a bigger deal to attend schools with higher acclaimed basketball programs due to the television exposure they would receive. Cannon said that then, only the “big” games involving the big named schools such as UK, Kansas, and North Carolina would be seen on television. He went on to say with the sport becoming more and more mainstream by the year, more television contracts have been offered to not only the big name schools as mentioned before, but also up-and-coming schools such as BYU and Butler who have had success in the NCAA tournament in the past few years. He also went on to say that the money being poured into NBA scouting has increased significantly in these past five years as well, so regardless of television exposure, they will find talent and go where they must to get their take on the player of interest.
The role of pro potential in the recruiting process of high school athletes seems to a be a large key in the college decisions made by high school players, whether it be the national awareness they receive from the media, or the coaching they wish to receive. Still, there is another factor that high school students must take in to account, what benefits they will receive for attending a school.
A benefit that most elite athletes receive, regardless the sport, is a full ride. This is a scholarship that entails tuition, room and board, books, a meal plan, and even a laptop in most cases. I was curious of what other benefits someone with more credibility in college basketball would give to players deciding to play for him. I asked Cannon what benefits he thought an athlete in college should receive. He said that with a full ride, players should be compensated for travel expenses and be given travel expenses for long road trips to away games such as tournaments in other states, the Maui invitational for example. He also said that he thought that travel expenses for up to two of the players’ relatives to attend games should be covered. All these financial benefits are feasible in my opinion, but I want to look at other benefits that basketball players factually receive at UK besides for full rides. First, the social benefit of being desired in any social situation whether it be a group of girls on campus, or being bugged for pictures and autographs in local restaurants and pretty much any other location. This is where the University of Kentucky plays in, since the fan base for our basketball team has based itself on the tradition we have, and the success we experience each season, the players are seen as celebrities around Lexington and around Kentucky altogether for the most part. This could definitely play into the players decisions seeing as how players with so much talent want to be in the spotlight. Other benefits that each player shares is the physical and emotional support they have as athletes at UK. They are required to be in great physical shape to be prepared for each game and in turn build a great relationship with teammates through workouts, practices, and experiences had during team functions. This relationship provides a great basis for emotional support from player to player and even from player to coach. I mean let’s be honest; I would love to receive support and advice from Coach Cal on a daily basis. A further discussion on these benefits can be found at www.redpenguinathletics.com/benefits.shtml.
Courtesy of http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/sports/ncaabasketball/24calipari.html
So, in a nutshell, the benefits a player receives at a university whether from the fan base, the coaching, the teammates, or the financial aspect definitely plays into where players choose to play ball. I asked Hays if he thought there were any other factors that played into recruitment and he brought to my attention the AAU circuit and its ability to influence the choices of high school athletes. He said this, “What you are seeing a lot of now, with the creation of AAU circuit, the role of recruiting handlers has become very prevalent.” (Cannon 2011) A handler in the terms of high school basketball is a person with ties between an AAU program and a college program. An example of a relevant player dealing with a handler in the past couple of years is UK all-star, John Wall. Hays spoke of the situation in brief detail but said John Wall went against his handler’s advice and wanted to play for a program coached by John Calipari. To follow up on Hays’ point, I went further into the topic and found out from www.rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/nasketball/blog/the_dagger that the name of the person who handled John Wall was Brian Clifton, who tried to sway him to pick Duke and Miami over Kentucky. You can find more info at that website about the story. However, John Calipari persisted to recruit the highly sought after athlete and with the talk of his pro potential and of the fan base and tradition of Kentucky basketball and by the end of it, Wall was a Wildcat.
Something else that Hays talked about that I found interesting and could easily be seen as a dirty tactic is the use of brand name sports apparel companies in the AAU circuit. Some examples are the “Adidas Kids” and the complementary “Nike Kids” which are names given to the teams in the AAU circuit who use brand names such as Nike and Adidas to attract high school athletes to play for their squads. This causes a domino effect because the players pick these squads and are then dealt to the handlers of these squads. These handlers then try to sway them to play for the college program of their choice.
Courtesy of http://www.bballspotlight.com
The use of these handlers seems to be a shady recruit tactic as to the public eye it goes almost unnoticed but in reality, these high school students are being brainwashed to pick one University over another based on the coaches handlers’ wants. This definitely adds another perspective to recruitment that you would not normally consider though. This is discussed further at www.bleacherreport.com/articles/42874-john-wall-whats-wrong-with-ncaa-recruiting.
We have now arrived at the point which will serve as a basis of reflection of this analysis. Through this prose, I have established that in most occasions, the players we recruit have their sights set on the NBA and aren’t as concerned about education as things like the potential to increase draft stock and to reach the NBA draft. The Benefits they will receive are generally a shared universal idea between all “big name” collegiate programs. But the benefit players receive here that other schools don’t offer is the unequaled fan support and tradition we hold on to dearly as a basketball community. The use of handlers is something I learned about that I had no idea of until my interview with Hays that could definitely be seen as one of the biggest undersides of recruiting.
While it is true that our basketball program has had unrivaled success, the blood of the program wouldn’t be able to flow through its body without the constant beating of its heart, which in my opinion is the players we recruit. It’s all about the recruitment process which goes unseen for the most part and that most take for granted, but is composed of by many parts. These parts being the education the player will receive, the pro potential of a program, and the benefits a player receives for being a part of the program. All of these go in to recruitment talks but what I have found is that the players are more inclined to go to schools with higher pro potential then to attend a school with a strong academic program. The benefits the players receive fall in line with what the program can offer, and there is none greater than UK so more funding is poured into those benefits whether they be nicer facilities or more financial support as a student. But I think the handlers and the pro potential offered by a program has a more national effect on these high school players because players want to go where they will be the best players on the best teams and generally the handlers try to sway players to one of these teams over the other.
The recruitment process is very important for these young men in deciding where they will spend the next chapter of their life whether it be cut short by the NBA or finished with a degree. However, I hope I have shown through this analysis how the recruitment process, although normally unseen, can be viewed as a confusing and mysterious time for these young adults as it is filled with several offers and biased opinions that will sway them to want to make decisions based on others wants as opposed to their own.
Works Cited
Personal Interview; (Cannon, Julius Hays; Nov 10th, 2011)
Tubby Smith Cutting Net;http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1998/03/23/ukgamer23.html
Cal With Players; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/sports/ncaabasketball/24calipari.html
Players in their NBA jerseys; http://blog.eastbay.com/all/sneaker-watch-nba-rookie-photoshoot/
Malik Maitland (A Nike Kid); http://www.bballspotlight.com/2011/04/in-spotlight-malik-maitland-nike-team.html
John wall story; (John Wall Handler on Miami: “There are worst places to be”; Eamonn Brennan; May 14, 2011)www.rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/nasketball/blog/the_dagger
(North Carolina-Kentucky: From a NBA scouting perspective; Jonathan Givony; Monday, Dec 5th, 2008) www.Grantland.com
(John Wall: Whats wrong with recruiting? Matt Smith (Senior Analyst); July 31st, 2008) www.bleacherreport.com/articles/42874-john-wall-whats-wrong-with-ncaa-recruiting.
(6 Benefits of College Athletes; Unknown author; Unknown date of publish)
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