Scarbinsky: Knight's `precautionary' move may be revolutionary, too

http://blog.al.com/kevin-scarbinsky/2010/05/scarbinsky_knights_precautiona.html

Kentucky signee Brandon Knight, a baller and a scholar. (Slamonline.com)
I don’t know his GPA, his ACT or his IQ, but Brandon Knight has to be one of the smartest student-athletes in the country.

His basketball smarts are obvious.

He looked at John Calipari’s last three point guards and saw a No. 1 overall draft pick and NBA rookie of the year in Derrick Rose, a No. 4 overall pick and rookie of the year in Tyreke Evans and another top pick and top rookie in waiting in John Wall.

Seeing a pattern, Knight, a talented point guard himself, picked Kentucky.

But what may be most impressive about him are his street smarts.

He didn’t sign a national letter of intent with UK. He signed scholarship papers with the school.

That binds the school to him, at least for one year – more on that later – rather than him to the school.

In short, Kentucky has to give him a scholarship if he shows up, but he’s not legally obligated to show up, as he would be had he signed an NLOI.

Justin Knox probably wishes he’d thought of that.

Brandon Knight’s mother, Tonya Knight, told the Lexington Herald-Leader her son signed a scholarship and not a letter of intent as "a precautionary measure."

Could be revolutionary, too.

"You always want a way out in case the coach leaves," she said.

Kudos and Happy Mother’s Day to her.

It’s about time student-athletes played the game outside the lines as well as they play it inside them.

For too long, they’ve been well-publicized indentured servants, subject to the whims of their coaches/masters and their schools/plantations.

They’ve watched coaches come and go without strings or remorse, enriching themselves in the process, and wondered how a grown man who’ll ask for a commitment isn’t willing to make one in return and stick to it.

They’ve watched other student-athletes in need of a change have to make it in handcuffs. Yes, the school/plantation tells them, we’ll let you leave, but we’ll decide where you can and can’t go.

Oh, and once you get there, unless you arrive with a loophole, like a sick family member or an undergraduate degree, you’ll have to sit out a year before you can play.

The balance of power between the players who do the bulk of the work and the coaches and schools who reap the financial rewards is more lopsided than the final score to come between Alabama and Georgia State.

Now the student-athletes have an unusual, and unusually powerful, potential ally in the U.S. Justice Department.