The Historical Basketball League (HBL) has been gaining steam as of late, most noticeably attracting headlines when announcing former NBA star David West would be the upstart NCAA alternative's COO.

With a planned launch set for June 2020, as well as recent announcements of the eight cities the HBL will call home for its inaugural season, skeptical eyes will certainly be staring up until the very first player commits.

For people who sincerely believe fans root as much for the wardrobe the players don as they do for the talent wearing it, the HBL can only succeed if it lands the nation's very best high school players — or preferably, projected future NBA types.

This isn't lost on HBL cofounder and CEO Ricky Volante.

“We haven't been shy about this,” Volante told me. “The entire model is contingent upon elite talent. It's going to be very difficult for us to successfully implement our commercial model without a certain level of product that people want to watch. Otherwise, if we could just make our living on two-and three-star prospects, everybody would be watching the Division II basketball, which doesn't happen.”

The HBL's plan is a simple one, even if the task at hand is larger than the aspiration's starting point. To allow student-athletes to be paid for their services directly, while being offered a scholarship, as well as allowing for the players to benefit off their own likeness by going after sponsorship deals.

Volante says it will be up to West, as well as a team around him, to scout and recruit players to join the league. After determining who they want, preferably the best domestic and international players, the HBL will offer varying contracts to potential employees, with salaries ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 a year, mostly depending on the value the league believes each player can bring to it.

There will be insurance offered as well. And, since it is a business, Volante admitted these deals are reliant upon the player living up to his side of the bargain.

“Once we've signed a player, they have a five-year scholarship. We can never take that away from them,” Volante said. “They can complete that on a non-continuous basis. However, employment with the league, that's a different story. Obviously, we're not going into this with the idea in mind that we're going to be cutting people left and right. We hope our evaluation process is good enough that we'll be signing the players we want to sign from the beginning, but again, that it'll be an option basis, so that we get the opportunity to renew that option each year.”

As far as the business model goes, the path to playing actual games has been a bit nontraditional. The league's host cities — Philadelphia (PA), Baltimore (MD), Washington DC, Richmond (VA), Norfolk (VA), Raleigh (NC), Charlotte (NC), and Atlanta (GA) — have been announced, but the venues are not yet secured. Volante isn't too concerned over this, as they've already been in touch with relevant people in every city, knowing they can secure at least one venue in each.

The league, as soon as this week, plans to make more announcements in regards to who else is involved with it. After that, coaches and team branding should be revealed shortly thereafter. Until then, there's other pressing issues at hand for the HBL.

“We've had a discussion about (broadcast) platforms already,” said Volante. “Those are ongoing as are a number of discussions with potential apparel partners.”

Volante couldn't tell me what potential broadcast partners the league has talked to, due to deals not yet being fully fleshed out, but he did say he believes the demographic the league should be targeting is already online — active on social media and using the various streams each provide, as well as other new-wave broadcasting applications.

For many who have been dying for EA Sports, or other video game publishers, to get back into the collegiate sports game, Volante also provided a glimmer of hope.

“We're talking to the video game industry,” he said. “We have started speaking with some of the established, and less so established, platforms and game providers and developers. We view that as a huge opportunity for us from a commercial standpoint, but also from a recruiting standpoint.”

When it comes to likeness and sponsorship deals, Volante says the HBL will operate like the NBA. Players are free to find their own shoe deals, if applicable, and the potential video game would be a part of the contracts the players sign.

The similarities to the NBA doesn't end there, either. In an effort to differentiate their league from the NCAA's college basketball, as well as “properly” develop future professional players, the Historical Basketball League's on-court rules and regulations will mirror that of the best association in the world.

All NBA (rules) across the board,” Volante said when asked about the HBL's on-the-court product. “David (West) and I talk about have spoken about the weird thing; that college basketball has different rules than the NBA.”

“We will develop here. We will give them an opportunity to reach the next-level. In the traditional college basketball route, players are dropped into systems that you end up with guys in the NBA who don't know simple terminology. How do you go through all of college basketball and that's the return? That's the feedback we're getting from front offices we are dealing with. So many growing pains with a lot of these players and that's something they're excited about when we've shown them real development is part of the plan. So it's kind of boring, but the fact that our rules are going to be the same rules that these players ultimately play in at the next stage is important.”

The league has plans for future expansion, but is currently aware that scaling within reason is best, citing the AAF's failure as a primary motivation for keeping the first season to eight teams with all locations relatively close to each other in proximity.

Nevertheless, there's still work for the HBL to do before it will gain a stronghold in the public's conscious. There's many private steps to be taken, from the business side, for it to reach a profitable level, even if it could take a few years.

At the end of the day, though, as Volante admitted, none of it will matter if they're unable to land the best players available. Given the projected 2020 launch date, with an aim to recruit during the NCAA's “quiet period” in August, those who advocate for a pay-for-play model will soon enough know if the HBL can be a solution to the NCAA's archaid model reliant upon unpaid labor and the ideal of amateurism .

A theoretical of an NCAA alternative league is great, and even admirable in founding. However, it'll be in actual practice where it matters most.

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Editor’s note: This column first appeared on Forbes, but has been republished under the original author’s name at ClutchPoints thanks to the publisher-contributor agreement.

Joseph Nardone has been covering college basketball for nearly a decade for various outlets in a variety of ways. You can follow him on Twitter @JosephNardone.