Do I Still Have My Amateur Eligibility?

I remember distinctly when I was in college having a long discussion with several friends about declaring for the NBA draft. We were just 18 years old, and prior to the new eligibility rules, well within the requirements to declare – if only we gave up our amateur status, and thus our college eligibility. While we just discussed this, several others have actually done it, for publicity, hilariousness, or just simply to fill the long daylight hours between $2 pitchers; the most prominent example is Washington University in St. Louis double major Zach Feinstein (Systems Engineering and Applied Mathematics), pictured below, who declared in 2008 and documented the process at Draft Zach Feinstein.

Shaq-eizel, aka The Big Matza

Zach ultimately appeared as an “unknown player” on most draft lists, did in fact declare for the NBA draft, and now sells t-shirts on his website and keeps up with a Facebook group to commemorate that accomplishment.

He’s no longer an amateur. If Zach, standing tall at 5’8″ and 130 pounds, could find a way to make a college basketball team, he would not be eligible for the roster; by forgoing his eligibility, he’s declared himself a professional.

This division between amateurs and professionals, I believe – particularly with regard to contact with agents – is critical not only to the relative equity but also whatever semblence of integrity we can still muster out of athletics across all levels of sport.

A good friend of CubicleGM, Villanova point guard Scottie Reynolds, recently entered the NBA draft pool, which allowed him to meet with NBA personnel, but did not hire an agent; by NBA rules, he was able to renounce his declaration before the draft and return for his senior season if he chose to do so.  After a brief flirtation with professional status, Reynolds chose to remain an amateur, electing to return to Villanova for his last year of eligibility.

Despite the many contractions and questionable rules-bending that occurs with basketball at lower levels, particularly in AAU leagues, the line between “professional” and “amateur” in basketball is now pretty definitively drawn with the latest rule changes (e.g. one year after high school graduating class or 19 years old at end of draft month to be eligible).  Sure, there is a propensity for AAU coaches to act as surrogate representatives for their players with college and professional coaches/teams, and of course, the declare/undeclare aspect of the NBA draft is “fuzzy”, but at least the NBA draws some sort of line between it’s amateurs and the big, bad, complicated land of professional sports.  Those who note the odd one-year rule for college, egregious salaries, and about ten years of drafting kids right out of high school may take exception, so please note that I wrote decent.

Nobody does this very well.  You could make an argument that the NFL maintains this important divide between professional and amateur sports a little more effectively, albeit in a very imperfect industry.  Players must be out of high school for at least three years.  All players who declare must sign with an agent.  Salaries are certainly high, but regulated by a portion of the salary cap allotted for signing players for their first year and balanced by largely non-guaranteed deals (for better or worse, but that’s another topic).

I personally believe that defining this line between amateur and professional is critical not only to maintaining viability and reducing variability in both levels of the sport, but also ensuring some semblance of equity between teams.

The sport that far and away has the fewest and most loosely enforced regulations with regard to this “line” is baseball.  And it is baseball that needs to position rules governing amateurs and professionals, both domestic- and foreign-born, and their contact with agents and professional personnel near the top of its top-heavy list of near term reforms.

The fact that major market teams and super agents in baseball can continue to not only pump unconstrained resources into “recruiting” amateur players at the high school and collegiate level, but also flood unchecked into “markets” of developing baseball talent in other countries continues to crumble whatever is left of the wall between amateur and professional status in baseball.  This crumbling wall further allows for disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” in the game and enables a ridiculous abuse of youth far more shocking than anything ever uncovered in the NBA.

There have been three major recent examples of this faltering amateur/professional distinction in baseball:

1. The very fact that super agent Scott Boras was shouting on high that Stephen Strasburg was a “special kind of player” deserving of a contract of $50M of more while he was still in college, well before the MLB draft.
2. The signing bonus scandal for players in the Caribbean (focused but not limited to the Washington Nationals), resulting in the resignation of Nationals GM Jim Bowden and scouting director Jose Rijo.
3. A recent Sports Illustrated cover article on 16-year old high school sophomore Bryce Harper, aka “Baseball’s Lebron”, that notes that Scott Boras is an “advisor” of the Harper family as they determine what/how their son will pursue a driver’s license as well as a fast-track GED diploma to enable him to play professionally as soon as possible.

Very few have made a big deal about the fact that many, many baseball players are drafted straight out of high school and choose to sign contracts immediately with professional organizations, almost always joining a minor league team.  Yet in every year from 2001-2006, when the NBA draft began to average 6-8 high school picks per 60 selections in the two-round draft, commentators and activists from coast-to-coast began to say how detrimental it was not only to college basketball, but more importantly to the emotional psyche of the player and the example it set for youth.

The irony of this fact is that even at the peak of this trend, about 15% of all NBA draft selections were used for high school players.  In the MLB, however, the vast majority of selections from the 1960s to the present came from high school; only in 1978 had the majority played college baseball and not until 2002 did the number of draftees who played at the collegiate level exceed 60%.

A side note: The further irony of this fact is that very few top MLB draftees will/have actually appeared in a major league game (only 13 of 52 first-round picks in the 1997 draft have played in at least 100 games as of 2009), while top NBA draftees, whether from high school before 2006 or otherwise, are almost guaranteed a roster spot with the professional club.

To continue, I would imagine, if we are at all concerned with the “impact on youth” resulting from high school draft eligibility, we should be up-in-arms about baseball in the same manner we were about the NBA.  Sure, the media exposure of college basketball compared to college baseball accounts for some distinction in the relative hysteria over the amateur/professional “foul line”.  The wide expanse of minor league baseball accounts for a bit more.  But the fact that this reality goes unreported or analyzed (and even when reported, largely accepted) is entirely absurd.

But I am still yet to understand why this, to include any of the many egregious acts committed by agents, scouts and general managers in the Dominican Republic, or even a high school in Nevada, are not part of the chorus for reform in baseball.  Maybe this is because baseball has a bit more on its hands, with the PED scandal and programmatic changes like salary caps or instant replay.  Maybe we’re just too tired.  Regardless, I would venture that defining and maintaining the line between amateurs and professionals should at least be amongst baseball’s priorities to address in the near term.

First, amateur athletes (high school and college) should not be allowed to have any contact with professional agents such as Scott Boras.  Second, recruitment and signing of foreign players should be regulated via an integrated and truly global amateur draft, or alternatively a separate forum that monitors these transactions to ensure fairness, equal opportunity, and representation of “amateur” interests, including a foreign amateur “bill of rights”.  And third, the possibility for an American education, both in high school and college, should be encouraged by Major League Baseball itself, to ensure that domestic and foreign amateurs are put in a position to pursue the full opportunity of an American education instead of simply signed for a large stack of $100 bills and then bought and sold in their teens like assets on a commodity futures market.

Yet sadly, for a professional league that has consistently turned a blind eye on integrity over the last decade for the sake of a few more butts in seats, this type of reform is not only improbable but probably wholly impossible until a leader and/or professional culture emerges that acts on principle instead of the bottom line.

It can start by telling Scott Boras to stay the hell away from Bryce Harper.

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