[L]ast night was a validation of the Calipari Way: recruit a fresh stable of top talent each year, luring them with promises of immediate preparation for the N.B.A. and limited academic commitments, then let them go and find new guys to replace them. “What I’m hoping is that there’s six first-rounders on this team,” Calipari said after the game. “That’s why I’ve got to go recruiting on Friday.” What little shred of truth existed in the N.C.A.A.’s beloved moniker “student-athlete”—a phrase Calipari actively, and rightly, ignores—was whittled further away.
… [I]t becomes easy to imagine a series of factories set up, if they don’t exist already, in Lawrence, Chapel Hill, Lansing, Storrs, and the handful of other places with the clout to promise enough national-television exposure for a kid to wait out the N.B.A.’s minimum-age requirement in style. All this has made being a fan of “traditional” college basketball feel a bit like preferring rotary phones to cell phones—there’s no going back, so, best to get on with it.
Rotary phones doesn’t quite say it. It’s more like preferring petty larceny to grand larceny.