It's going to be interesting to see how I feel about college basketball in 5 years.
I absolutely lovely the game of baseball, but I've developed a lot of disdain for major league baseball. It's too much of a business. Owners seem to care only about profits/losses. Players care about maximizing their next contract. It feels like CBB is going in that direction.
And I understand the same could potentially be said about professional sports in general. I believe the NFL is better because of the hard salary cap. You don't have your haves and have nots.
This feels like Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, etc. are going to be akin to the Dodgers & Yankees of the world. I guess you have to hope ISU will fall to a middle tier (and not the Pirates, A's, Royals zone), but maybe the lack of parody just leads to a lack of interest.
The loss of longevity on rosters is huge. You remove a huge reason for people to take ownership in their team - feeling like they know "their players" and having people make a true commitment to that particular city. But when businesses have become increasingly disloyal toward their employees and the world is much more cut-throat, it's insane to expect employees - in this case, players - to hold to some standard of conduct that the institutions won't.
As soon people aren't considered "valuable enough" now, they are thrown to the side. I've seen it all the time in my life personally. At first, it was my parents' friends who had worked loyally for a company for 20-25+ years getting laid off in their mid- to late-50s when it's impossible to get any type of job that could even come close to replacing that money-wise, let alone match their career ambitions or goals. So they looked for hourly-wage jobs just to keep busy and sunk into periods of depression. Then it happened to my uncle, and my other aunts and uncles began feeling the pressure to retire as soon as possible, so their companies could clear the payrolls. Finally, it hit my dad. He lost his job at 57 after working for the same company for 29 years - Zoom meeting on a Tuesday, clean out your office by Friday. He has applied for numerous jobs in his field but no one will even take a look at him because they think he's too expensive and don't want to invest money into any potential (expensive and specialized) training for an employee that might just give them a few years. My parents' entire financial plan for retirement was based around him working until at least 62, ideally 65. Now, they are smart and planned for the worst but replacing 5-8 years of peak income just isn't going to happen for him. Their true plans for retirement are never going to happen - they are the type of people that sacrificed a lot to raise us as kids and kept deferring their dreams for seeing the world while carefully saving to make it happen in their 60s. Now they're just hoping to make what they have saved work to pay the bills and get the mortgage fully paid in a few years. By the same token, can you blame any athlete, who all have very short windows for peak success in their careers, for trying to take full advantage of any financial opportunity knowing that the vast majority of people in corporate/athletic leadership positions could care less about them as people and are likely to screw them over to protect the "bottom line?"
Personally, I think Tyrese might be short-sighted especially if he takes money now while losing PT and the chance to fully showcase his skills - he could have been better off staying at ISU for 1-2 more years as the star and getting lots of exposure that way. But it's hard to argue against the kind of money being floated when you know that time is short and most people in positions of power have absolutely zero loyalty anymore.
