A mostly modest suggestion

So Michigan State star Miles Bridges is off the hook now, which turned out not to be much of a hook. Forty bucks to his favorite charity kept him eligible after it came out that his parents had dinner with Christian Dawkins, the subject of the FBI investigation into corruption in college basketball.

I don't know for sure, none of us do, because this iceberg is only showing its tip at the moment. But I suspect a lot of what the FBI uncovered is exactly this sort of penny-ante stuff.

Thing is, nobody does penny ante the way the NCAA does penny ante, which means it still amounts to cheatin'. And there's a lot of it going on out there.  This should surprise no one, because high-end college buckets is as much a professional enterprise as the NBA is, and much of what's come out is merely bidnesses doin' bidness. Only the NCAA's Tower of Babel framework of rules constructed to maintain its fiction of amateurism makes any of it seem at all shady.

They are hoist by their own petard, these people. And in more ways than one.

That the NBA's edict against drafting players directly out of high school has adversely impacted the college game is beyond debate at this point, because it created the era of the one-and-done, and that in turn created the system of bartering for one-and-dones the FBI's investigation is only beginning to uncover. No rational person, after all,  believes it isn't far more widespread than the current revelations have indicated.

Market forces drive college buckets as surely as they drive any other corporate interest.  Duh.

But this didn't have to happen. And it's the NCAA's fault it did.

By failing to respond to the NBA's absurd rule, it created the mess that's currently coming to light. The NBA surely knew its rule would have an impact on college basketball, and that it probably wouldn't be a good one. But it didn't care, and it doesn't care now.

The NCAA, therefore, should have exhibited a similar level of concern for the NBA.

This idea does not originate with me, but with one of my former sports editors, the esteemed Justice B. Hill. It is, however, a good one, and so I pass it along with all due credit to its author.

Here's what the NCAA should have done, per Mr. Hill: When the NBA passed its rule, the NCAA should have retaliated with one of its own. It should have decreed that any school that signs a player intent on using college basketball as a waiting room for a year (which the NBA's rule was forcing him to do) must forfeit that scholarship for the remainder of that player's eligibility. That is to say, you can sign a probable one-and-done, but you lose his scholarship for the next three years if he bails.

I'm sure a lot of schools would still sign one-and-dones regardless. But a lot would think twice about doing it if it was going to cost them a scholarship for three years. Scholarships are precious, especially in college basketball.

The upshot, you figure, would be that at least a certain number of probable one-and-dones would suddenly find the college hoops waiting room closed for business. And you know what likely would happen then?

They'd hire lawyers and sue the NBA over its rule.

Now, I could be totally wrong about that. The scenario might not play out that way at all.  But there's a chance it could, and at least the NCAA would have been taking proactive measures to protect its own turf.

Because, again, the NBA didn't care what its ridiculous and unnecessary 19-year-old rule might do to college basketball. So why should the NCAA have cared about the NBA?

A question with only one obvious answer.