Three Thoughts From The Weekend: The House case, Purdue’s Zach Edey and football recruiting
GoldandBlack.com’s Three Thoughts from the Weekend column runs every Monday morning, with analysis of Purdue football, Boilermaker men’s basketball, recruiting, or whatever else comes to mind. In this week’s edition, the House case, Zach Edey and the NBA and patience in football recruiting.
ON *ANOTHER* DAY OF RECKONING FOR THE NCAA
This upcoming settlement in the House case is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money in the modern NCAA, paying a lot of money to a lot of people who should have had it years ago, but here we are.
It wasn’t all that long ago, it seems like, that NCAA sycophants in the athletic director and university president communities — they are the NCAA, by the way, not the suits in Indy — had to be dragged into an Octagon to get cost-of-attendance stipends, basically pizza money. It was actual news back then when athletic departments came around to providing unlimited snacks for their athletes. Granola bars were an actual battleground.
Now, decades of obstructionism in the face of inevitability — and Purdue was very much part of the Stone Age view on amateurism and “a scholarship is enough” — have brought things to the financial haircut everyone’s about to take. Boo hoo for these $100-million athletic departments and TV networks bank-rolling them, right? Well, in fairness, these administrators and coaches now, most of them weren’t part of the resistance.
This is all different now. It’s about to be all different again. Revenue sharing — ostensibly, salary — is coming. Scholarship limits may give way to mere roster caps. How all that co-exists with NIL and transfer culture, I have no idea. But everything is different now. Not better, not worse, just different. Well, better and worse depend on your place in the ecosystem I suppose.
But it wasn’t the NCAA’s decision; it was the NCAA repeatedly walking in and out of courtrooms wearing Washington Generals garb. Had it been proactive years back, it could have had some measure of control here.
“I had the money ’til they made me pay, then I had the sense to be on my way.” — Warren Zevon
Everybody in the game now, they were in the house when the House burned down, quite literally.
ON ZACH EDEY AND PARADIGM-BUSTING
Zach Edey‘s two-month reign as the pre-eminent player in college basketball is over, but part of his legacy ought to exist in the way people view traditional big men in the college game. The game has changed, yes, but the best players can still be the best players.
Now’s Edey’s chance to make a similar statement at the NBA level. Chances are, he’s not going to be a star, certainly not the destructor he was at Purdue, nor will he play the sort of role he did at Purdue. Those evaluating him projecting him to that role are doing it wrong. You should be looking at the rebounding, the effort, the work ethic, etc, and whatever raw materials may exist for development.
But those dismissing his chances to be an NBA player of value just because giants don’t dominate the NBA anymore, they’re doing it wrong, too, and here’s Edey’s chance to stand again for those who stand way taller than everyone else.
They come in all shapes and sizes, guys. Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic are incredible and unique players, especially for guys who look like they should be wearing beer helmets and Packers jerseys.
There are role players all over the NBA who don’t fit tradition blueprints, but they have provided value because they’re good players.
Edey is a good player, too, but the fact he’s different really makes him the same as a lot of players who’ve earned already what he is striving for.
ON FOOTBALL RECRUITING
We are nearing the time of year where people start filling the first silo of their recruiting classes in football. The freshmen, many of them fall in place during mid-summer, months before their transfer-market competition shows up.
But as this portal-churning only intensifies, it is going to be a great gauge for how much coaches can stomach being patient.
In my frame of reference with Purdue, the overwhelming majority of the excellent players revealed themselves as such very quickly. But that’s not always the case in a sports in which age and physical gains matter.
How long now do coaches wait before recruiting over a young player or giving them “the talk”? It’s even more of a win-now world than ever and the days of letting a redshirt freshman, let’s say, offensive tackle develop on the job may be nearing an end.
The post Three Thoughts From The Weekend: The House case, Purdue’s Zach Edey and football recruiting appeared first on On3.
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