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"[I]f the N.C.A.A. truly cared about improving colleges instead of settling for the extra year before eligibility that Stern is talking about, it should use its considerable influence to demand that both the N.B.A. and N.F.L. foot the college's bill for training pro athletes by paying a given amount each year for each player successfully drafted from college. The money would go into a fund for academic scholarships at the colleges these players attended. It wouldn't perhaps turn young superstars into student-athletes, but in today's hideous economic times, it might turn some deserving teenagers into students. "
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"Brad Templeton, chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has produced his own "Downfall" parody video, making fun of the fact that Constantin Films has issued DMCA notices to remove all of the "Downfall" parody videos from YouTube:"
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"Perhaps you've been following my ongoing series on dark matter. Perhaps, like many, you're still skeptical. After all, it's not like we've gone and made it in a lab or discovered it in an experiment. 15 years after David Weinberg composed the Dark Matter Rap, we still don't know exactly what dark matter is.
But there's a whole lot that we do know about it just from looking out at the Universe. "
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"These are catchy ideas, easily expressed in a tweet. They don't always stand up to scrutiny - if you're trying to maximize calories per dollar, for example, you could buy rice or bread. But they're catchy ways to think about a subject and as I tweeted them, I could watch readers race to retweet them. And then there was this one: #poptech Michael Pollan "A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius."
A slam dunk of a soundbite. A phrase you can't resist retweeting. And people did - more than a hundred times in the hours after I posted it. Too bad it's not actually true."
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If the NBA rewarded colleges for providing a player that made it to the pros, the reasons for cheating or skirting the rules (e.g. AAU ball clubs) increase even more than at present, and the joke that is freshman eligibility would get even more obscene than it already is.
The author had the right idea when pointing out why the NBA's recent rule change was for their benefit, not the player's benefit. The best solution is what is done in baseball and hockey: If you start college, you aren't eligible for the draft until after your junior year or a certain age.
And then I'd add (for all sports) that a player is not eligible to play until they have earned at least a C in 15 semester hours of college-level classes that are part of the standard freshman curriculum, but would be guaranteed four years of eligibility and a minimum of 3 years of scholarship support.