Knee jerk or just a jerk

By all means, everyone must have read, heard or ranted about the new idiotic UAAP rule.

In case you have been living under a rock, the UAAP board voted 5-2 for the two-year residency rule of a high school athlete transferring from one UAAP member school to another.

In short, let’s name it the Jerie Pinggoy Jr. Rule.

How did this rule come to be? Well, after having the Soc Rivera Rule approved during the 2008 season of the men’s basketball tournament, the Far Eastern University Tamaraws are once again shunned by their juniors star, this time in the person of Jerie Pinggoy, the two-time MVP of the juniors division. He chose Ateneo for his collegiate education and basketball career as opposed to transferring his home to Morayta (FEU-FERN campus is in Fairview). You can say it’s another of those knee-jerk reactions by a kid who’s candy was taken away from him. Well not exactly a kid. I should say Anton Montinola had another hand in this.

Being spurned by your star really hurts. Just ask Cleveland. However, there should be a very definite reason why he did not choose to wear FEU’s green and gold. Well, I for one would not pick to play for a school whose image has been tarnished by hooliganism ON THE COURT and selling games off it. It doesn’t help either when two of their players, never mind if one of them is just about to be elevated, are caught and thrown into jail for using illegal drugs near school premises. I mean come on, if you’re the parent, would you really want your kid to be in that environment?

No? Neither would I.

Which brings me to the rule. It seems as if all the Baby Tams are contracted to their Seniors squad. Well, if we are to really have new rules set, it’s that one. You can’t contract high school athletes plain and simple. Contracting them privately is an underhanded way unless of course the kid wants to play through and through for one school only, starting from grade school up. This is not the professional ranks yet, Anton Montinola. Nasa amateur pa tayo pare.

For me, this shows how much FEU has been on bitter mode as of late. Remember the year Greg Slaughter was just about to play in the UAAP? Didn’t FEU try to bar his way to the hardcourt from the boardroom? And then, you lose a prized junior player to the team that has sliced and diced your team in two Finals appearances, you take it upon yourself again to present a “benevolent” rule that is supposed to protect piracy of players?

Piracy of players? Really? You complain about that now? If there’s someone who should complain about piracy of players, it should be San Beda College! Their juniors team, the Red Cubs, have been everybody’s favorite high school prodigy factory. And since their seniors team couldn’t win scrat until 2006, the kids chose to go to greener pastures, to winners, to places where they could bloom, have a career and at the same time get free education. But San Beda re-branded itself and soon enough, high school players leaving the team haven’t been as frequent.

With this new rule that Montinola, together with NU, UST (a surprise given their recruiting clout), DLSU (another surprise here being they just grabbed Ben Mbala from Visayas), and Adamson (no surprises there) cooked up, ALL high school athletes will be forced to stay home with their schools lest they rust with the two year wait. I do not know what’s your take, but I find that idiosyncratic and purpose-defeating.

You are curtailing academic freedom, Anton Montinola.

You say you want to keep them from being pirated, but you kick them out from your team if they underperform?

You say you want parity, well, how can you get parity if you hoard your players?

And lastly, you are just putting Ateneo in a tight corner here. Oh please, do not deny it, all it lacks is it being spelled in bold, capital letters.

This is your grand plan to stop the Blue Eagle juggernaut that just got stronger with the addition of your supposed savior (heck, Pinggoy and Tolomia are a better pair than with Romeo, that much I would admit).

High school stars should never be compelled where they should play. That’s why they are called student-athletes. Student first before athlete. But it seems, to you, Anton Montinola, they are just pieces to bring back the respect that you yourselves lost in the first place due to your own players melting down.

This vendetta is very poor.

And Morayta reeks of bitterness up to this day, from three years past.

Follow @PioStark for more hits and punches. Don’t forget to put #NewUAAPRule everytime you tweet about the UAAP.