“For starters: If the sport must accept one-and-done players — young talents who spend a year in school and bolt as soon as they meet the NBA’s 19-and-a-year-out-of-high-school requirement for entering the draft — make sure they’re college students for the full year. Shore up their academic requirements.

And get Billy Hunter on the phone. Convince the head of the NBA Players Association that a two-year wait after high school would be better.

“That’s the worst situation there is in college sports right now,” says Knight, the retired Hall of Fame coach. “And the NCAA has done nothing with it.”

Yes, the draft rule is the NBA’s and NBAPA’s doing. But Knight, a longtime critic of the NCAA, argues that by merely requiring first-year players to pass six first-semester hours to be eligible the following semester — for the bulk of the basketball season and, more importantly, for the NCAA tournament — the colleges’ governing body is allowing non-students to suit up.

“What is the integrity of a kid who plays for an NCAA team that goes to Final Four, or wins the championship, who has passed six hours and then goes on to play the next semester without ever going to class?” Knight says. “What they should do is each team going into the NCAA tournament should have to submit a roster … listing the players and their grade-point averages and classes they’ve attended to that date the second semester. It would help tremendously in making sure it’s students playing for the national championship rather than hired players.”

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/2009-06-23-knight-one-and-done_N.htm

“Cincinnati hasn’t made the NCAA tournament since Bob Huggins was fired, so it was only a matter of time before they fled the moral high ground in an attempt to get back onto the college basketball radar.

Maybe this change of stance has to do with the fact that Nancy Zimpher, the school president who ran Huggins out of town, recently left the university to become the chancellor of the SUNY system in New York. Zimpher left on May 31. I can’t imagine the timing of her departure and the announcement that Cincinnati is in the hunt for Stephenson are a coincidence.”

It is not a coincidence – desperate times call for desperate measures.

Lance should feel at home since he’ll have King’s Island Amusement Park to take the place of his since lost Coney Island Astroland. My dad would ride in the front seat of the Cyclone with his hands raised. For those who haven’t rode it, the Cyclone would force you out of your seat as it went down its sharpest slope – nice diversion – any metaphors from you all – Lance’s recruitment & roller coaster ride?