Change Not Always for Better (See: NBA)

Just what the NFL needed to make its week complete:

Children in the draft!

Now young people won’t have to settle for tearing bustiers off pop stars at halftime, they can play too!

In a victory for the principle of equal protection before the law, if not for professional football, a federal judge in New York ruled that 20-year-old Maurice Clarett could make himself available for the NFL draft, which had barred players until they had been out of high school for three years.

Unfortunately for the NFL, it had a house-of-cards defense that blew away in its first actual test in court.

The NFL insisted its rule was collectively bargained with the players’ union. In fact, the rule is not specifically written into the collective bargaining agreement, so it might not really be a rule at all, but a mere agreement, which the union endorsed unofficially but its membership never ratified.

In practical terms, the NFL has defended its rule by giving way if anyone acted as if he would sue, as when a lawyer for Pittsburgh sophomore wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald recently wrote the league a letter, asking to become eligible.

Thursday, after the Clarett decision, Fitzgerald, a top-rated prospect who spent a year in prep school, was cleared to make himself available for the draft by the NFL. He is expected to go within the first few picks.

The process started in 1990, when Oklahoma State junior Barry Sanders asked to be declared eligible for the draft, which was then closed to everyone but seniors. Fearing a court fight, the NFL let him in and adopted its three-year rule, which held up until Thursday.

This might be a great legal victory for Clarett, but it remains to be seen what it does for his career, because NFL general managers and scouts seem to regard him as the prospect from hell.

His college career was impressive but brief. He gained 1,237 yards and scored 16 touchdowns as an Ohio State freshman, but he sat out three games because of a shoulder injury while getting into trouble on all fronts: athletic (arguing with an assistant coach during a game), academic (not showing up for classes) and legal (pleading guilty to making a false police report.)

The academic part didn’t scare off NFL scouts, but the questions about his durability and attitude weren’t merely red flags but banners.

ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper rates the 6-foot, 230-pound Clarett a second-round pick, which is the consensus of general managers and scouts.

Football, which is heavily regimented, is not a hospitable environment for physically and emotionally immature players. Because everyone believes that most of the kids will get ground up and spit out, the likeliest outcome is that the NFL and the union will execute a more formal agreement that will stand up in court.

Of course, as the Buffalo Bills proved when they used a first-round pick for University of Miami running back Willis McGahee, who was pooh-poohed by scouts after knee surgery, NFL teams are desperate for talent too.

Whatever they say, in the name of tradition, principle and the good of the league, on draft day teams act in their own, narrow self-interest.

When high school players began declaring for the NBA draft, general managers and scouts were indignant. Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before they were at all the major prep tournaments too.

Young players have changed the NBA, and not for the better. The question is not so much whether they can play, because even if some blue-chip prospects struggle for years, most turn out to be fine ... on the floor.

Of the 19 American-born players in the upcoming NBA All-Star game, four (Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal and Tracy McGrady) came from high school. Four (Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson, Baron Davis and Ron Artest) left college before their junior years. Foreign-born Dirk Nowitzki and Andrei Kirilenko arrived at 20 and Peja Stojakovic at 21.

The problem is off the floor, dealing with the celebrity lifestyle, and may not show up for years, as in the now-turbulent life of Bryant, once considered the most golden of the children.

Before the Lakers first played the Cleveland Cavaliers and this season’s phenom of phenoms, LeBron James, Coach Phil Jackson expressed his distaste at seeing players turn pro so young.

In ensuing weeks, James broke out, living up to even the unprecedented hype he’d gotten. Not that that changed Jackson’s basic argument.

“Oh, he’s definitely a guy who has the ability to play the game,” Jackson said Wednesday in Cleveland. “My critique is not about the ability to play

the game but the ability to assume maturation in a graceful way....

“It [arriving young] distorts their ability to grow up in a natural environment and grow to maturity in a way that they’re self-sufficient ... before jumping into this game, which is a distortion of life, basically.”

Football is more like baseball, which has let players turn pro out of high school since time immemorial but doesn’t lionize or prematurely enrich them.

In baseball, almost any prospect will be farmed out for years of seasoning, in which he makes little money, faces little pressure and is no more famous than he was in high school.

In football, players bulk up physically for years to survive the brutal competition against everyone else who has bulked up for years. It’s no coincidence that the greatest abuses of body-building drugs and supplements have come from this game, which is predicated on strength, force and violence.

This is your life, Maurice Clarett. Good luck.