UCF guard Marcus Jordan has a solution for all the “one-and-done” players in college basketball: enabling student athletes to sign endorsement deals.
“If student athletes had the opportunity to make endorsement deals I bet students would stay longer.. And it’s just the right thing to do,” Jordan tweeted Friday afternoon.
The twitter discussion started after Jordan, son of NBA legend Michael Jordan, tweeted about an article on ESPN.com by Pat Forde showing how the Josh Selby situation, in which he attended Kansas for one year out of high school due to the NBA draft age regulations which don’t allow you to declare for the draft unless you are 19, exposes the problems with the NBA age restriction. Jordan tweeted that the “NCAA should make something happen.”
Jordan said that players should be able to make endorsement deals off their own skills and that “either we all get paid or nobody get paid.”
“Coaches and schools make millions of dollars but the players can’t make money off of their own skills and the same thing coaches n schools,” Jordan tweeted.
Jordan also hinted via his twitter account that the players are the only ones not getting paid, when they are responsible for bringing fans to the arenas.
“All I’m saying is the system ain’t right. And they know what they doing… Everybody getting paid except for the people that fill the stands.”
Article X, Section 1 of the 2005 NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement states that “all drafted players must be at least 19 years old during the calendar year of the draft. To determine whether a player is eligible for a given year’s draft, subtract 19 from the year of the draft. If the player was born during or before that year, he is eligible.”
The rule was put into effect with the 2005-06 NBA basketball season.
Jordan suggestion for keeping these players is simple: let them sign endorsement deals.
“Kids don’t even get to use they scholarship anymore cuz they end up leaving… If top players had a smal endorsement deal I bet they’d stay.”
