Ollie to coach new venture for top teen prospects
Kevin Ollie, who won a national title at UConn, has been hired as the head coach for the Overtime Elite, a new avenue for top 16- to 18-year-old prospects.
Former UConn Huskies coach and 13-year NBA veteran Kevin Ollie has been hired as head coach and director of player development for the Overtime Elite, a new professional basketball league for top prospects between 16 and 18 years old.
Just the latest indication of the seismic shift that is occurring in/to college basketball. A professional league for high school sophomores (maybe freshmen?). The thinking on this stuff has so completely evolved in the last decade....maybe we should have seen this coming. The analogy that comes to mind is tennis - the top 1/2 of the top 1% in that sport, those kids don't have a normal childhood. They grow up in some academy and then turn pro at 13, or whatever. They have a particular skill that is worth a lot of money, and they want to start getting paid as early as possible. So too basketball players. Back when things were simpler (when I was a kid, Joe B Hall made, I think, $300,000 to coach at Kentucky - well paid, but not enough that it made people scream or even think that kids were being exploited) a Michael Jordan or Ralph Sampson were content to play in college 3-4 years and wait until they were 22 to get paid. Obviously those days are gone. I was thinking if the NIL mess gets straightened out, then that top percentage of kids could get placated that way, and maybe the college game could retain intact. I see now that's foolish - if kids are wanting to get paid starting at 16, and people are willing to set up a system to accommodate that, then college hoops as we've known it cannot last.
