I’m an illegal gambler.

That’s right, I’m a reckless lawbreaker, and a pretty dumb one to boot.

Like millions of other people who couldn’t tell you what school Mateen Cleaves went to, or where Tom Izzo coaches (the answer to both: Michigan State University), I ponied up a whopping $5 to fill out a bracket for the recent NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Never mind that I couldn’t name a single player in Southeast Louisiana basketball history, or tell you what the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga squad was shooting from the line this year.

I held my own through the second round, when it seemed like every big-name team – the perennially competitive programs that keep casual fans like me alive every March – was getting upset by those scrappy underdog teams from Alabama-Birmingham or wherever, and lost my chance at the $25 prize when UNC beat Illinois in the title game.

But now that the madness has been quelled for another year, the National Basketball Association has lately been confronting a question that the NCAA needs to start asking itself:

Has the “educational experience” offered at big-time college football and basketball programs become so diluted, so corrupted by the influences of money and fame, that young players would be better off simply advancing into the pros if they have the talent to do so?

The NBA is considering raising its age limit to 20 to encourage players who aren’t ready for the big leagues to join its developmental league or go to college. Some observers see the move as the first step toward a true “minor league” system in basketball.

But if you haven’t been following the league lately, the idea seems almost quaint – players who join the league straight out of high school are among the game’s greatest stars. Seven players who skipped college played in this year’s All Star Game, and the last two Rookie of the Year winners, Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James and Phoenix Suns' Amare Stoudemire, came straight from high school.

Other sports handle the age question differently. The NFL bars players from joining the league until they are at least three years out of high school, though this is largely due to concerns about the safety of 18 year olds playing an inherently violent game with men who have as much as 20 years’ worth of physical development on them.

Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League have no age limits and – not coincidentally – thriving minor league and semi-pro developmental leagues. Though college baseball and hockey programs exist across the country, they are mercifully devoid of the scandalous headlines that have tainted many big-name football and basketball programs.

The list of transgressions at some programs is long and growing progressively worse – from simple grade inflation and “phantom” classes for athletes, to the outrageous allegations of a culture of sexual assault, possibly arranged and covered up by coaches, at the University of Colorado, or the big-ticket “gifts,” paid for by generous alumni, that somehow end up in star players’ possession at schools across the country.

But there is another scandal here, one that receives much less attention.

Billions of dollars are earned through lucrative broadcast and merchandising contracts every year, and divvied up by universities, the NCAA and the television networks. Meanwhile, players are encouraged to skip class and attend up to three practices a day – and what is “encouragement” when it comes from a coach who makes a few million bucks a year and has the power to yank your athletic scholarship on a moment’s notice?

The only kind of education players get is this: you are only important as long as you can play.
Ultimately, an age limit doesn’t make much sense in the NBA. As Jermaine O’Neal, the Indiana Pacers forward who was drafted out of high school and became an NBA star, put it, “If I can go to the U.S.
Army and fight the war at 18, why can't (I) play basketball for 48 minutes and go home?”

But the issue here isn’t what is fair for the handful of 18 and 19 year olds who actually have the talent to play in the NBA. The issue is what is fair for the thousands of “student athletes” who are sacrificing their education for the championship aspirations of wealthy alumni boosters.

What will happen to them after the star player cuts down the net at the final game of the tourney, declares for the draft and signs a multi-million-dollar contract?

The NBA and the NFL should take steps to establish true minor leagues, giving players who hope to play professionally time to develop their skills and mature as players and people. The universities could scale back their programs, and college sports could once again be a pastime – an extracurricular activity, one small part of the pantheon of student life – rather than bringing shame and scandal on so many once-proud institutions.