Barack Obama has always been a big basketball fan dating all the way to his high school days where he played on the school basketball team. He has always said he was never really good, but he has also kept a love for the sport, especially for his Chicago Bulls.
Since leaving the office of the president he has gone around speaking at different places on a variety of topics and last Friday he was at an MIT for a major sports policy conference where he spoke to a couple hundred people. reason.com got audio of the speech, and one of his most interesting discussions was about the college basketball world.
He talked about the current college basketball system and how it isn't working, and how there needs to be an alternative option.
“It's just not a sustainable way of doing business,” said Obama. “Then when everybody acts shock that some kid from extraordinarily poor circumstances who's got 5, 10, 15 million dollars waiting for him is going to be circled by everybody in a context in which people are making billions of dollars, it's not good.”
Creating an alternative league for people eventually headed to the NBA “won't solve all the problems but what it will do is reduce the hypocrisy” of pretending that all student-athletes are both students and athletes.”
The point he brings up is very true. Not everyone can do school and basketball, but there are plenty of guys who just need to focus on basketball.
There has been a lot more steam about another league being formed, and it will be interesting to see what league does end up getting created in the next few years.
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