NCAA Women’s Basketball Players are Hitting the Glass (Ceiling)

Northwestern’s football team has filed the necessary legal actions to form a player’s union for NCAA athletes.  The focus centers on paying NCAA athletes for the profit they bring to their schools.  However, an interesting byproduct could emerge from the legal malaise that is bound to ensue.  While football players are eligible for the NFL draft three years after their high school graduation and men’s basketball players are subject to the one and done rule, women’s basketball players find themselves subject to four years of NCAA competition.

The WNBA’s eligibility requirements state that regardless of nationality prospects must meet one of the four following requirements.  She must be at least 22 years old during the calendar year of her draft eligible season, have exhausted her collegiate eligibility, has graduated from a four year college, or she has played at least two seasons for another professional league.  These ironclad eligibility requirements hem in women’s basketball players and stifle the growth of the WNBA.  The only way to circumvent the system is for an athlete to play overseas for two seasons after high school but before she is 22 years old.  Brandon Jennings chose to play for a year in Italy instead of at the University of Arizona.  While his NBA career has been moderately successful, he has cautioned other prep standouts, such as Aquille Carr, about the potential pitfalls.

Aside from the globetrotting approach, the rules force collegiate women to play for four seasons as an NCAA athlete.  Being an NCAA athlete is a privilege and honor most people never enjoy.  NCAA athletes work hard but enjoy benefits that the average students do not, such as extra scholarship money, free apparel, and free food on team trips.  This is not an attack on the NCAA’s system overall.  However, the imbalanced draft requirements between the NBA and WNBA are wrong.

Why is Breanna Stewart (pictured below), who Sports Illustrated hails as the “first Kevin Durant of the women’s game,” forced to limit her earning potential by spending four years at Geno Auriemma’s basketball factory?  This is not a plea for prep to pro in the women’s game.  It is a plea for equal standards between two professional basketball leagues.  This equality of opportunity seems more natural with this article, which establishes the legal link between the NBA and WNBA that still exists.

 

Critics decry men’s college basketball as a meaningless one-year layover to the NBA that exploits athletes for profit as an amateur athlete.  If one year is a farce, how is four years better?  That is four times the risk of catastrophic injury that Candace Parker, Brittney Griner, and Skylar Diggins faced.  None of these women needed to graduate to be successful on the court, success that would provide media commentating opportunities post-basketball.  Graduating is a big deal but talented WNBA players could finish their degrees on-line or in the off-season like their NBA peers. 

           Changing the WNBA’s draft requirements would allow talented players longer careers in a league that is struggling to market itself and survive.  Some women would jump early and fail.  That is the nature of risk.  It is doubtful that a year of college basketball would have saved Kwame Brown from becoming an ignominious punchline.  Stewart appears ready to be a pro but she will have to wait, unlike Andrew Wiggins.  Forming a player’s union and paying NCAA athletes is nice.  Fixing the gender inequality in basketball draft eligibility, and giving women the chance to be pros as soon as they are ready would be better still.