With today being my soft deadline, the following three items are still being pursued:
1) An interview with Spencer Haywood, who made history in 1971. Haywood challenged in court the NBA’s rule that players had to be four years removed from high school. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor and he paved the way for scores of underclassmen to enter the NBA.
I have been in contact with Haywood here in the last week but our schedules have conflicted. I’m aiming to interview him and post our talk by next Friday, the hard deadline for any revisions on this project.
2) A Q&A via email with Brandon Jennings. If you’ve followed this project at all, then you know about the role Jennings has played. He became the first player to skip college to play in Europe for one season before being drafted into the NBA. Others are already following his lead.
Questions have been forwarded to Jennings’ agent and I’m hoping to hear back from him (with a little help from Sonny Vaccaro). Hopefully, I will have something by next Friday.
3) Email interviews with the athletic directors of two high-profile NCAA Division I program about how the NBA’s age limit impacts the college game. I also want to find out how their schools deal with recruiting potential “one-and-dones,” what changes they would advocate, and whether or not the feel that academic integrity is being compromised.
I am awaiting a response from one school’s A.D., while still trying to covince the other A.D. to talk to me. I’ll see what I can land by next Friday.
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I hope to have at least some, if not all, of this material here in the next week and I want to thank everyone who read and followed my project throughout the summer!
Arin Karimian
