As we speak, the Amateur Athletic Union is destroying high school and NCAA basketball as we know it. While that was an wonderfully dramatic oversimplification, it’s true: what is happening within non-scholastic basketball in the US is rapidly seeping into the scholastic side. “What is exactly happening?”, those who have no experience with AAU may ask. AAU is for the most part an excellent idea: it provides another competitive venue for basketball players as well as serves as way to hone one’s skills during the offseason.
The problem is that AAU has some questionable principles involved, and with more high school players playing in the Union than ever before, those principles are moving upwards in to the college level. The hands down worst part of AAU is the practice of team moving. Let’s put ourselves in the position of a young, prospective college recruit, playing for one of our home town’s club teams during the school offseason. We go to all the practices, we travel with the team to tournaments across the area, and make bonds with our teammates; then, all of the sudden, another player comes mid-season who talked with Coach and has worked his way into a spot on the roster. He plays the same position as us, he’s of similar build, and we’ve met in the past. While we could choose the honorable path and fight for our position with the newcomer through hard work on the court, there’s an easier alternative: simply saying goodbye to our current brethren, and signing up with a different club team in the same area.
Unfortunately, the second alternative has been a much more popular route for many in the AAU system, and now the trend has moved into scholastic basketball. As reported by SI’s Luke Winn, only 60% of sophomores playing NCAA Basketball are with the team they originally committed to play for. That means nearly two out of every five commits will end up transferring within their first two years of eligibility. And obviously the college players have to come from somewhere, as the trend is just as bad in high school. I can see young athletes within my community moving from school to school, AAU team to AAU team, with no care on how that reflects on their own personal image. They just want playing time and exposure, and transferring is the easiest way to obtain that. I’ve seen kids play for five different high schools in four years, in addition to their numerous AAU transfers. What these kids don’t understand is how little their AAU fantasy land resembles real life- after basketball, you can’t just quit your job because the pay is low and expect to make considerably more somewhere else without putting in the hard work necessary.
Not only does it reflect badly on the character of these college prospect players, it limits the ability of non-college prospects (i.e., the majority of high school players) to continue to play the sport they love.
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