STAR SEARCH

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

Nov. 18, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The opening of the college basketball season never used to be a quiz show, something Regis Philbin might host.

It never used to be a “gotcha” exercise, like the one that reporter played with George W. Bush about world leaders.

Quick, name the Kansas point guard!

Once, fall became winter and UCLA junior center Bill Walton became its senior center.

We never had to play these name games, filling in so many blanks for so many blank faces.

Yet, today, we have to ask:

Can you name this year’s preseason All-American team?

We can tell you what it could have been:

Kobe Bryant, Richard Hamilton, Jermaine O’Neal, Mike Bibby, Steve Francis, Tim Thomas.

Had these rim rattlers stayed in college, or gone to college in the cases of Bryant and O’Neal, they would have been starting their senior seasons, gracing magazine covers and turning Dick Vitale’s face brighter shades of fire-engine red.

But what about this year?

You say Mateen Cleaves, Michigan State?

We say, “That’s one, and he’s hurt.”

Chris Porter, Auburn.

That’s two.

Scooter Pie from Pitt?

Close enough. Scoonie Penn, Ohio State.

Cleaves, Porter and Penn, in fact, are the only returnees from last year’s first-, second- and third-team All-American teams.

Once again, the best young players have gone to the NBA before time expired: Ron Artest of St. John’s, William Avery, Elton Brand and Corey Maggette of Duke, Lamar Odom of Rhode Island, Baron Davis of UCLA, Francis of Maryland, Hamilton of Connecticut, Jumaine Jones of Georgia, Dion Glover of Georgia Tech.

That’s six sophomores, two juniors and two freshmen.

Jonathan Bender, a high school senior, went straight to the NBA.

“It’s going to happen more and more,” Arizona Coach Lute Olson says. “It’s just the mind-set of the kids. You see it at Nike and Adidas camps in summer. If they have to go to college, it’s like ‘God, I didn’t make my first goal.’ It’s crazy.”

It’s reality.

Given this now annual drain of talent, you would half expect one day to wake up and discover college basketball has become college baseball, a halfway house for the professionally challenged.

Yet, the college game is a paradox, a sport that succeeds as it bleeds.

“I don’t think the game is ever going to be diluted,” Arizona State Coach Rob Evans says. “What makes it exciting is that the best teams don’t always win.”

OK, but who is the preseason player of the year?

“Who will it be in the postseason, that’s what you need to ask,” Evans answers. “It’ll be a kid you don’t know nothing about.”

OK, but what about Duke, that bastion of the four-year plan, Brand, Avery and Maggette leaving in the same year?

“Duke will be just as good, with or without Maggette,” Evans says. “The state of the college game, the talent level, is very good. Duke lost Maggette, and all those players, but check out where they’re ranked.”

Oops. Evans made the comments before Duke opened the season 0-2.

But is Evans right, or overly optimistic?

The college game is giving off mixed signals.

While some worry about the game’s fundamental moorings, multinational corporations are arm wrestling to bring basketball to your living rooms.

CBS paid $1.73 billion for the NCAA tournament package through 2002, but that deal is back on the table and open to bidders, one of which is ABC, which owns ESPN. There are estimates the new deal will be worth as much as $4 billion over 10 years.

ESPN already handles the regular-season coverage and will show a mind-boggling 273 games this season.

“We clearly feel college basketball has been, and will continue to be a significant cornerstone of our lineup,” Josh Krulewitz, ESPN’s manager of communications, says.

If college basketball is sick, it looks like nothing more serious than a case of the sniffles.

Yet, there are cautionary words being spoken by people who have been around the game long enough to know.

“I don’t think we should fall into the trap of judging the health of the game by how much the TV package is worth,” Jim Marchiony, the NCAA’s director of broadcast services, says.

There is evidence the game may be in trouble.

Last year’s national final game between Connecticut and Duke drew a 17.2 rating, an all-time low. The national semifinal games got hammered in the ratings by women’s figure skating--not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Teams are shooting worse and scoring less. The overall shooting percentage in Division I last year was 43.6%, lowest since 1986. Teams shot only 67.8% from the foul line and there were more turnovers and fewer assists.

The mid-range jump shot has gone the way of T-Rex.

NCAA attendance figures are holding steady--last year’s Division I average of 5,451 fans per game was down only eight fans per game from the 1997-98 average--but there is a sense that fewer students are attending.

“At Kentucky, if you want to go see a game, you can see a game,” David Cawood, the NCAA’s former assistant executive director, says. “Five, six years ago, you couldn’t do that. Ten years from now, who’s going to be sitting in those seats? That’s a big concern.”

There is an oft-quoted line about the difference between the pro and college games: the pro game is about the name on the back of the jersey and the college game is about the name on the front.

For sure, the college game has some built-in protectors that seem to insulate it from full-blown disaster:

1. The NCAA tournament is a slice of American pie, as rock-solid an object of adoration as Mt. Rushmore. “March Madness” will live as long as there are March and office pools.

2. The uniforms of UCLA, Duke and North Carolina are almost as important as the players who fill them. You can’t say that about the Vancouver Grizzlies.

3. Cinderella stories move product. You don’t have to have an all-star team to catch the nation’s fancy. Give the people an annual injection of Gonzaga or Miami of Ohio, throw in an Austin Peay every decade, and they’ll keep coming back for more hoops and buying your brand of toothpaste.

4. Players aren’t that important. Like wheat, they are harvested each year and delivered to market. The stars of the sports, the constants, are Mike Krzyzewski (coach), Bob Knight (coach), Lute Olson (coach) and Dick Vitale (former coach).

But how long can the good times last?

With so few marquee names to promote in December, college basketball has become disproportionately back-ended, the regular season a long, lonely, prelude to an end game in March.

While this year’s “Coaches vs. Cancer” tournament certainly qualifies as a worthy cause, by New Year’s Day, we’re clamoring for a charity event titled “Valium for Vitale.”

How important, really, is Duke-North Carolina in January, when both teams will probably be assured high seedings in the NCAA tournament?

Even ESPN recognizes that the loss of star power has an impact on programming.

“Between now and when ESPN started 20 years ago, the trend for college players is not necessarily to stay around,” Krulewitz says. “With that trend, you have to adjust how you market.”

ESPN has responded with cable creations, such as the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, and staging, during conference play, interesting national matchups such as Georgia Tech-Kentucky, Texas-UConn, Louisville-Georgetown and Florida-DePaul.

Still, no amount of makeup can guarantee that the yearly exodus of players will not adversely impact the sport.

“You worry a lot about this,” Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, a member of committee negotiating the new NCAA tournament television contract, says. “But I just don’t know how to measure it. Kids continue to leave and leave. I worry about the NBA forming a minor league. I don’t know how to equate all that. My fear is if you carry it out in its worst scenario, it could have a devastating effect. At the end of the day, it’s all whether the public buys it or not.”

The issue of players leaving early to the NBA is clearly the most serious.

Last spring, Duke Coach Krzyzewski, lauded for never having a player leave early for the NBA, watched Brand, Avery and Maggette make the move while Krzyzewski was recovering from hip surgery.

More than a blow to the Duke program, the departures were symbolic, since Coach K was seen as the keeper of the floodgate.

“I don’t think Duke, or Mike, ever thought they were immune,” Washington Coach Bob Bender, a Duke assistant coach in the 1980s, says. “But to the extent that it hit this year, obviously, it was surprising.”

Bender isn’t worried about Duke replacing departed players.

Bender is worried about the mid-major program that loses the one star player that can make or break a season.

“It affects all the rest of us,” he said. “When it happens at a mid-major, it can be devastating. It can set you back four years.”

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Nothing short of a rewrite of the U.S. Constitution is going to stop this flow. The battle for freedom in sports was hard fought, and won by Spencer Haywood, Curt Flood, Dave McNally, et al.

Few begrudge players who want to bypass school for NBA riches.

“I think it’s dangerous,” Arizona State’s Evans says. “Any time a kid goes to the pros, the pros are diluted. They are not mentally prepared to handle it.

“But” he added, “I don’t blame them.”

But what of the others?

Of the 27 players who applied for early entry to the NBA draft, only 13 made opening-day rosters.

“Unfortunately,” Tranghese says, “the stories of kids coming out and failing is really not drawing a lot of attention, as opposed to Kevin Garnetts and Jonathan Benders making it. The schools at the top will still get the best players, but the ones at the bottom, their chances of getting a Wally Szczerbiak are less and less.”

The NCAA and NBA have wrestled with what to do within the bounds of the law.

The NBA instituted a rookie salary cap, locking an incoming player to a fixed income for his first three years.

But the plan backfired, players realizing it was better to leave early and get their three-year clock started toward free agency.

There have been other suggestions:

1. Make freshmen ineligible. A Division I working group launched this trial balloon last summer, but it was widely dismissed as impractical, if not illegal.

“If you look at it logically,” Tranghese says, “it might even drive more kids away.”

2. Make players who enter college ineligible for the draft until their junior years. Major league baseball applies this rule to college players.

“I think it’s a good rule,” Bender says. “It’s worth a shot. It’s like we have this dilemma, but no one’s willing to say, ‘Let’s try this.’ ”

Tranghese says it’s not the NCAA’s call.

“That’s not a college rule, that’s a major league baseball rule,” Tranghese says. “I believe the NBA and players’ association could do that if they so elected.”

Again, there are questions of legality. Baseball, remember, holds an annual amateur draft for players. Players who elect to go to college are more inclined to stay at least two years. And, more important, no college player has tested baseball’s rule in court.

3. Allow players who leave early and are not drafted or signed to return to college.

This has possibilities.

“I don’t think that’s a dead issue,” the NCAA’s Marchiony said. “I think that will receive more and more conversation.”

The NCAA has taken a first step by allowing players to withdraw their names from NBA consideration up to a week before the draft. Last June, 12 players rescinded their applications, allowing players such as Harold Arceneaux, one of the stars of last NCAA tournament, to return to Weber State.

The flip side: Imagine the nightmare for a coach trying to recruit and keep a squad intact if his entire roster leaves each spring to test the NBA waters.

4. Set a minimum age requirement for NBA entry. This is an idea that has been floated by Commissioner David Stern.

Tranghese doesn’t think the NBA is doing enough.

“They have incentive to deal with these issues because I don’t know if they benefit from having immature, physically unprepared kids coming into the system,” he says.

Tranghese says the NBA’s idea of a farm system could do great harm to the college game:

“I would argue the greatest marketing tool they’ve had is the college game. They can never replace that. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are classic examples. They went through the system, played a great game, went to the NBA and everybody was ready for that.”

More than one request to speak with an NBA official about these issues was not fulfilled.

No one knows for sure how long it will take before the annual departure of talent makes the college game unwatchable, if indeed that ever happens.

To this point, it’s more an issue for study groups and governing boards.

Some think the sport is bullet-proof.

“College basketball will survive,” Arizona’s Olson said. “The talent may be down, but the competition will remain.”

Bender agrees.

“I think the game itself will stand on its own,” he said. “It’s different from the NBA.”

For now, yes.

But forever?

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

No School Spirit

Players who would be in college if they weren’t in the NBA.