Believe it or not, the Duke Blue Devils are catching some heat in the wake of signing 5-star recruit Marvin Bagley III.
The New York Post went all in on Duke and Coach K.
Check out this excerpt:
Bagley already is regarded as a Top 3 NBA draft pick — next year! Technically a high school senior, he’s hoping the NCAA will grant him “re-classification” status so he can play this season at Duke then enter the draft.
And he’ll arrive at Duke having played for three high schools in two states, Arizona and California.
While such a transient high-school career may strike the normal instincts as abnormal, it’s the new normal for many promising basketball children. Dubious “academies” and “prep schools” now exist in large part to serve as work-on-their-games, fill-out-their-frames warehouses inventoried by big-time college coaches.
Bagley and his loved ones must forgive my cynicism, but I wasn’t born cynical; big-time college sports are simply not be trusted.
Still, given that it’s Duke, we’re supposed to regard Bagley as a legitimate, Duke-qualified full-scholarship student-athlete who meets with coach Mike Krzyzewski’s heralded high standards — at least as heard on TV, especially CBS and ESPN.
Imagine what those desensitized, TV-celebrated “Cameron Crazies” would do to Bagley if he played at Duke for UNC, North Carolina St. or Kentucky. They’d mob-trash him as a one-and-done rent-a-star.
Then there’s the decades-long rationalization that “If we didn’t recruit him someone else would.” Southern Cal finished a deeply disappointed — as in crushed — second to Duke for Bagley.
And by now you know the other rationalization: It’s a business.
