The battle is joined - THE GAME OF MY LIFE by Bill Velasco

The battle to keep college players from seeing action in the Philippine Basketball League may soon be joined. The Universities Athletic Association of the Philippines is now considering banning its players from the PBL, akin to what the NCAA has announced it would already do.

This is based on the pronouncement of Games and Amusements Board chairman Dominador Cepeda that the PBL is, indeed, a professional league wherein players received monetary compensation for their play. When the resolution first came out, PBL commissioner Chino Trinidad insisted that his league is an amateur league, and that to declare it professional would seriously jeopardize the development of amateur basketball in the Philippines.

The thin veil between professionalism and amateurism was further disintegrated when two of the San Juan Knights, MBA shot-block leader Omanzie Rodriguez and high-flying Bruce Dacia jumped the fence into the PBL. Dacia promptly started to dominate, averaging roughly 19 points a game. Rodriguez set a new record with 9 blocks in one half. A couple of days after playing in the PBL, the pair hopped back to the MBA, just as if they slipped on an old pair of sneakers.

In almost every other field, students are allowed to take their practicum in a professional atmosphere, and some even receive pay for their work. Isn’t that what school is training them for, to be able to blend into the workforce? Why is the same practice being punished in basketball? Why are students in other courses allowed to earn work experience even during summer and regular classes while basketball players are not? The PBL doesn’t even play during the first semester college basketball calendar. Schools can even consider it off-season training.

The ban can be interpreted as punishing success. Players who are talented enough to play in the PBL actually help promote their school, and elevate their varsity teams’ talent. When they graduate, they will probably be basketball players. Why hold them back? Being an amateur is a state of mind. If the player can maintain his grades and still play for his school, why not allow him?

In the era of open basketball, amateurs and professionals are allowed to play each other in the world championships and even the Olympics. It has, without a doubt, lifted the overall skill level of the sport. The International Olympic Committee, the highest amateur sports body in the world, considers "faster, higher, stronger" its motto, and has chosen to allow countries to send their best, regardless of their station in life, male, female, old and young, amateur and professional.

Jim Thorpe won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics. In January of the following year, the Amateur Athletic Union discovered that Thorpe was paid $25 a week to play minor league baseball in 1909. They forced him to return his medals. On January 18, 1983, 30 years after Thorpe had died, the IOC had his medals restored and presented them to his children. His grandson marched into Los Angeles Coliseum at the opening of the 1984 Games as one of those chosen to bear the Olympic flag.

In sports like tennis, basketball, figure skating and track and field, professionals have given up their status to compete in the Olympics. Once the Olympics were over, they went back to their previous stations.

Understandably, the NCAA is concerned that its players may not be mature enough to handle early exposure to a professional atmosphere. But there are safeguards, such as proper guidance and in-school instruction. The PBL under Trinidad, for its part, already lowered the maximum allowance tolerable to P15,000 a month.

Another question is: what if the PBL teams in question enforce their contracts upon the players? The players will therefore have no choice but to abdicate their positions on their school teams, exactly the opposite of what the NCAA wants.

While the status of the PBL has yet to be decided with finality, it would be best for all concerned if the NCAA, as a league, would set an example and sit down with the players involved, and find some way to compromise, instead of acting as a monolithic body of academicians enclosed in an ivory tower. They would put a human face on the NCAA, and show compassion to youngsters who are, after all, only seeking their calling, which may, in the end, not even be in basketball. But these young men will remember, for the rest of their lives, how the NCAA and their schools shepherded them through their baptism into the outside world. Then their loyalty to their schools would know no bounds.