The National Collegiate Athletic Association better get its collective head out of the sand and pay attention.

College basketball is falling apart and it’s time for them to take a stand.

They have spent the past decade looking the other way as high school players and freshmen have jumped to the National Basketball Association.

This has got to stop.

You want to talk about why graduation rates in college basketball are so pathetic?

Look at the numbers. Take a good look at the numbers.

Those graduation rates include players that leave early and don’t get a college degree.
Is that fair to the university or college?

Of course not.

But the NCAA turns a blind eye to all those kids who leave after one, two or three years to get rich in the NBA.

Today, headlines across the country talked about how Kentucky, the No. 1 team in the land entering the tournament, lost five players to the upcoming NBA draft.

Now tell me how a program is supposed to recover from that?

Look at North Carolina, the 2009 national champs.

They lost a slew of talent to the NBA and they didn’t even make it to the NCAA Tournament.

This year’s tournament was thrilling; I will give you that. But how much longer will it remain that way if all the talent leaves and programs are left to rebuild year after year?
That may open it up a bit for the smaller schools, who are not hit by heavy losses of talent every year or so, to step up and compete with the big boys, but is that what we really want?

I love to see a team like Butler make a run in the NCAA Tournament from time-to-time, but I also like seeing the traditional powers reach the Final Four too.

So there has to be a fine balance maintained by the NCAA and I feel it is not holding up its end of the deal.

I have the same problem with college baseball, which loses a ton of kids to being drafted out of high school or leaving early to chase their dreams of playing professional baseball.

The NCAA put a stop to it in college football, claiming that because the sport is so physically demanding, players needed to play through their sophomore years before becoming eligible for the National Football League draft.

While I will give you that football is a more physical sport, it’s more about a kid’s maturity than it is about his physical build.

The NCAA needs to place the same limitations on all sports.

Once a player arrives at college, he should have to stay for at least two years. I would like to see that raised to three years, but who am I to say.

At least a program would be able to count on players for a couple of seasons as they try to build and maintain a competitive program.

Running a successful program takes talent, dedication and a stream of never-ending talent.

How can a coach develop that talent if it is only around for one season, or two tops?
Give these guys the same edge they have in football. Make the playing field even for all sports.

After all, that’s the NCAA’s job!

Scott Novak is sports editor for Leader Publications. He can be reached at scott.novak@leaderpub.com