Age Limitless: Should the NBA Kill College Basketball?

What if the NBA offered the top 100 high school prospects money, every year? What if owners pooled their resources, distributed a scaled amount of, say, $25 million (less than what Kobe makes) among these recruits to ensure their arrival in the league?

These athletes could enter the draft, play in the D-League or simply take the cash. But what they couldn't do, per NCAA rules, is play college basketball. And that should be an appealing idea for the NBA. 

Summer is the time for analyzing NBA draft prospects, many of whom have been waiting to join the league for a year at least. Summer is the time for analyzing college basketball recruits, many of whom have just joined wildly excited NCAA teams, in a process that can perhaps be described as a much celebrated form of forced waiting. 

The age limit may not be the reason for the prospecting season, but it certainly impacts its weather like an annual El Nino. There is more hype for a prospect like Shabazz Muhammad or Nerlens Noel (prodigies who will probably only play one obligatory year) than for someone who feels grateful for four years on scholarship.

It is as though everyone subconsciously grasps that UCLA and Kentucky are getting away with something incredible, something other than an NCAA rule violation: These schools have procured the free services of a famous mega-talent who prefers to be elsewhere.

It isn't just these programs who revel in free labor of the most wondrous kind; it's the entire college basketball structure. NCAA president Mark Emmert is so addicted to the NBA's largesse that he's tacitly begging David Stern to further raise the age limit. 

The conventional view is that this age limit is good for pro basketball because it allows the league to be a "free farm system." I hardly see how the system is free.

To my eyes, it looks like NBA owners are putting money in the pockets of college athletic directors, and for what in return? So that casual NBA fan can know who Kemba Walker is? So that the NBA doesn't have to worry about making money on the talent college administrators wring to the tune of $11 billion on March Madness alone? 

The "free farm system" angle implies that the NBA and NCAA operate in a state of blissful symbiosis. Except, college basketball is quite popular and overlaps with the NBA season. From fall through winter through spring, NCAA hoops pulls ratings and ticket money that might otherwise go to its big brother.

Not only that, but fans often draw comparisons between college and pro ball that can reflect unfavorably on the latter. Mark Emmert's sport is less a farm system than it is a competitor. 

So if you're a business (and the NBA lockout reminded us that pro basketball intends to be one), then what do you do to a competitor? If you can, you kill it. The age limit is college ball's deus ex machina, a magical gift from David Stern that keeps the sport more relevant than it otherwise would be.

The NBA could take back that talent and go another step: They could cut deep into the NCAA talent ranks, deep enough to where fans would give up on college ball despite the tradition and French horns and ugly sweaters.

Pro basketball's advantage: It's easy to beat the nothing Mark Emmert insists on paying his employees. So what would it take to kill college basketball? Paying the top 100 recruits? Top 200?

What price does the NBA need to pay to own its own sport?