It's Jason Whitlock Wednesday

A double-dip from Kansas City Star columnist and former Ball State baller Jason Whitlock today.

First, he addresses the Brandon Jennings story which I touched on briefly. For those of you that don't remember, Jennings is the heavily recruited basketball player that had committed to play for Arizona next year. However, BJ has since had a realization that goes something like this.

If I skip college and play in Europe for a year I:

- won't have to pretend to be a student for a semester
- won't have to worry about getting the requisite grade on the ACT test
- get to make millions of dollars!!

DING, DING, DING, DING, DING!!!!

The ludicrous 'one and done' rule has been in place for two years. Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for guys to figure this out. If I'm not mistaken Ohio State's own Kosta Koufos flirted with playing in Greece for a year instead of hitting the hardwood for the Buckeyes.

Did Kosta make the right choice? He went to class for two quarters, the Buckeyes won the N.I.T. and he got drafted 23rd overall. Oh, and he got to be flat broke for a year like all the other college kids that aren't making millions for the school. I'm not saying it was a prison sentence, there are worse things to be then BMOC for a few months.

Meanwhile, the Knicks drafted some guy named Danilo Galinari out of Italy with the sixth selection. SIXTH. Galinari is projected as a strong forward in the NBA, the same position many have Koufos playing. Galinari is 6'8", KK is 7'1". Those five inches constitute a huge difference in the NBA. Taller is always better in pro basketball, ALWAYS (except if your name is Shawn Bradley).

You can certainly insert some joke about the Knicks here. My guess is someone would have taken Galinari in the lottery. Danilo gets to introduce the starting lineup at Mets games and will make well over $2 million his first season. Kosta is trying to figure out what people do for fun in Salt Lake City and will make less then $1 million as a rookie. I know, sounds horrible for poor old Kosta, well maybe not poor. It's all relative though folks.

Every single year one or two NBA teams draft some Euro in the lottery that they've only seen play on grainy footage with lots of cigarette smoke wafting through the air. Meanwhile, they have an entire season's worth of footage on Mr. Koufos and he is much more of known quantity. It's kind of the same phenomenon as devaluing Shane Battier because he played for four years. Familiarity really does breed contempt.

Would Kosta Koufos have been drafted higher had he played in Greece last year? Who fuckin' knows. It's possible.

And I could grow hair too.

I heard the idiots from Rivals Radio the other day talking about the Brandon Jennings situation. The host, Bill King, went on some rant about how much trouble you can get in over in Europe. Like it's one big drug-infested orgy over there or something. Then the co-host buffoon finally lamented, "Just go to college." It all struck me as ridiculously selfish verbiage from people that are paid to talk about college sports for a living.

I know one guy that went to England for a semester of school. He was an asshole when he left the states, he was an asshole when he came back. Not much had changed except he'd had a good time. Same goes for my cousins who studied abroad, except for the being an asshole part.

If Brandon Jennings makes $1 million overseas then gets drafted in the lottery next year, the floodgates will open. The question is at that point does the NCAA realize it is participating in a grand farce or does it try and preserve the NBA farm system?

Who knows? All I know for sure is that I will miss not seeing Brandon Jenning's AWESOME haircut in Tuscon next season.