Cheick Diallo
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Jay Bilas comes from an anti-NCAA position on literally everything. He wants competitive bidding on players, no maximum on what players can be paid, for players to be employees – literally a professional basketball league.
Bilas is simply a players’ rights guy, but ignores the rule of unintended consequences. I have had quite a few twitter back and forths with Bilas. He firmly believes that going “free market” so to speak, with college hoops, will not destroy the game as we know it.
I firmly disagree.
Bilas makes all of his statements based on his claim that the NCAA is an illegal cartel. Unfortunately for him, decisions regarding the NCAA have been less than decisive. Again, he ignores the fact that the collapse of the NCAA would spell doom for the game we love. And further, doom for many, many college athletes.
@Statmachine What you won’t find is Bilas breaking down the “why” on the Diallo matter. Why? First, because he doesn’t know. If reporters or media members knew, particularly Bilas, we’d know. Second, because it’s easier for him to fire general potshots at the NCAA than to admit the need for an enforcer that many times is not favorable to the student athlete.
While I agree with @Texas-Hawk-10 in that Bilas is not just some random talking head, that doesn’t mean that he comments objectively on anything. Bilas hates the NCAA.
Bilas hates the NCAA – the same NCAA that gave him the position that he is in now. Oddly, the simple fact that he played college basketball put him in the position to earn significant money in the job he currently holds – yet another perk that some ignore related to being a NCAA athlete.
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To et al,
How would you like to be the NCAA regarding Diallo?
Diallo was sought hard by Nike UK, which really needed him because of a lot of jumps and a medium stack that at least smacked of apparent punishment for not winning an NCAA tournament as they appeared to be intended to do in apparent exchange for their ten stack.
Nike, allied with UK, is also allied with the vast majority of your member institutions.
Nike is one of your member institutions’ biggest sources of money after the TV contract and Nike is a major TV advertiser on the networks that you have your TV contract with.
But instead of signing with Nike-UK, or another Nike-school, Diallo signed with adidas KU.
adidas is allied with a small minority of your member institutions.
aididas is known for stirring up conflict among your member institutions by giving huge shoe contracts to a small minority of your member institutions.
Nike is allied with the huge majority of your future players through their AAU affiliations.
adidas is allied with a small minority of your future players through AAU affiliations.
Under Armor is a third and slowly ascendant member of a tennis shoe oligopoly and UA is not apparently involved either way with Diallo.
You could stick it to adidas-KU by moving incredibly deliberately on ruling Diallo eligible to play, and make Nike-UK and Nike pretty happy.
Or you could move deliberately on Diallo, and then rule him ineligible and have Nike on your side for years to come.
And you could afford to anger adidas-KU and adidas, because you’ve got Under Armour and its small, but increasing number of university relationships to fall back on, in order to maintain at least some slight autonomy in the face of Nike.
How would you rule on Diallo’s eligibility?
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@HighEliteMajor There’s a lot of things I disagree with Bilas about, but the way the Clearinghouse, now Eligibility Center, works is not one of them.
I do believe that a school’s established admission standards should be the basis for a player being able to play for a school. If a school has special exemptions for admitting underprivileged students, then whatever that percentage is should also be the same for an athletics team. If school has an established track record of 10% enrollment for underprivileged students, then a basketball team can use that exemption for 1 in 10 recruits they sign.
If a school tries to admit more special exemption kids than they should or there starts being other irregularities with admitting athletes, the NCAA should still have the authority to investigate and sanction schools for violations.
I do wish the NCAA could get a complete overhaul to be less bureaucratic and more transparent in how they operate, but I’m not in favor of getting rid of the NCAA because college athletics does need a governing body to regulate it. I also think each level should have their own committee to make rules specific to that level because D3 athletics is nothing like D1 athletics and there need to be rule tweaks specific to each level of competition.
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" Self said. “But the one most pleasant surprise we’ve had so far has been Carlton Bragg. I feel confident that we have enough punch up front, but we just won’t be very big if we don’t have Cheick.”
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“Their opinions, particularly Bilas’, lack any credibility”
I’ve never been a Bilas fan. I know many people like his chatter… but I’ve always read through his thin bs. And recently, he frames his comments differently to indicate every word he says as fact instead of it truly being just fiction. This is a common defensive reaction for people who start getting challenged on their comments.
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I happen to like Bilas a lot, kind of surprised to hear there are so many out there that don’t. Curious now, who is it that you guys like the most as an announcer/analyst??
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@RockkChalkk Bob Davis / Max Falkenstein.
just sayin
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@RockkChalkk There are only 3 names that cause me to visibly shudder when I see them on a commentating crew: Knight, Raftery, and Vitale.
Knight is a master of the game, but he frequently mixes up players and repeats comments. Basically every shot he’s ever seen could have been improved with a head/ball fake. He was moved to the SEC beat a couple years ago. I don’t know if he’s still announcing games, but it’s better if he isn’t.
Raftery is not a master of the game, nor of color commentary. “Onions!” and “man-da-man” have to be two of the stupidest catch phrases ever uttered by a grown man. The former is probably especially cutting to me because he used if after Ali Farokhmanesh buried us with an ill-conceived 3ptr in 2010. #NeverForget
Vitale, also a failed coach, is nevertheless an extremely warm, caring, and good man. I hate his voice and his even stupider catch phrase. Still, I do have a roundabout appreciation of him thanks to Grantland’s Mark Titus, who has turned Vitale’s frequent Andy Rooney-esque asides into a regular and highly entertaining diversion in his college hoops power ranking articles. That, and in real life, Vitale is such a wonderful human being, I think he deserves all of the success he’s had as a spokesperson of sorts for college basketball, even if I don’t care for his delivery.
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@drgnslayr And boy oh boy, Bilas doesn’t like being challenged on the NCAA topic.
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Bill Self received a letter Wednesday saying that DIALLO can start practicing that’s a start
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And also coach self said we should hear the final decision before the first game of the season or in two weeks
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@blackmild33 awesome! Thx! Heard they will move next week to new apts! Great news!
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Interesting that they are saying he can practice. That is certainly a plus as we come towards practice. He would have really been behind the 8-ball otherwise. I’m glad they were aware of practice starting soon & allowing him to participate.
You want to be excited but this is only half of the real answer we want. He can still be ruled a partial qualifier…
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@blackmild33 Is this true!? If it is, thats excellent news! Especially considering Colby just went down with a torn ACL. We were down one big on our practice team.
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YEAH! Now as always on this site, remember were not the lady from Hewlett - Packard. Where did you see this or hear it?
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I might be the only one but I don’t view the ruling to be able to practice necessarily as a positive. Sure its good that CD won’t fall too far behind in team activities but how come everyone else they ruled on thus far has been given the green light or the red light? Why is Diallo different? I sense this may be an indication that this could drag out for a long time before we hear anything and is just a way to buy more time.
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If Cheick is being allowed to practice, that puts his likelihood of full clearance very very high. There is a small chance he could be declared a partial qualifier and, with Big 12 rules, that’d screw us. But short of getting the final alles klar, the is the best news we’ve received since he committed.
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I thought that article was full of good new except for the ACL tear.
I think it’s great news that the players will be moved into their new digs before late night. This mean they will be able to show it off to the dozens of recruits visiting. (Dozens may be too much but it’s close)
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@RockkChalkk Diallo’s case is at the bottom of the pile because he didn’t get his full paperwork in until August after his summer school classes taken at KU. He took the summer school classes he did in order to cover to questionable classes at OSNA. So while most kids have their final paperwork to the NCAA in May or June, Diallo’s was 2 months behind that.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 Right. So my point is that the NCAA wouldn’t make the effort to send KU a letter if they were going to be making a ruling soon. I take it as a timetable move and not a gage on how likely he is to be cleared or not.
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@RockkChalkk I never said this was indicator his clearance was coming soon. Just that they expect him to be cleared at this point based what’s happened with other OSNA players and him taking classes at KU related to those issues. NCAA’s been’s known to drag out basketball player’s cases until October or early November and with Diallo being allowed to practice now, him being fully cleared by the first exhibition game is now the date we should hope to hear something by.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 I never said that you said it was an indicator his clearance was coming soon. Just making conversation.
btw, the new article today said that KU is still submitting requested info to the NCAA. It sounds like there has been some back and forth, additional requests, etc. and its not that the NCAA is sitting on their hands and taking their sweet old time reviewing it. I think that’s kindof some good news.
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I might be picking at straws but with that knowledge that the NCAA & KU are going back & forth with additional information has to be a good sign that he was cleared for practice.
The NCAA felt confident enough to clear him for practice & Late Night activities which in the past we’ve seen Mari & Ben not allowed to do such.
Maybe it means nothing, but its the most optimistic news we’ve received in months on this subject.
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I don’t know how to take the news about him being able to practice.
Glass half full - why would they let him practice if they don’t think he will eventually be cleared?
Glass half empty - he is allowed to practice because they are realizing it will still take a long time to resolve his eligibility. Also… Self made it sound like Kansas was still busy giving new info to the NCAA. That makes me wonder if Diallo is currently a “no” from the NCAA so Kansas is continuing to fight the case.
I know one thing… we shouldn’t get too excited until we get the real “green light.”
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@drgnslayr My first reaction when I read the news was the glass half-empty. I still feel the same. Hope I’m wrong and he gets cleared soon, but I have a bad feeling about this.
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My thoughts are that we will be very good without him and great with him… I’m excited for the coming year either way!
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@HighEliteMajor HEM, if you wrote a book on this subject, I’d buy it.
