Should I stay or should I go: The professional dilemma

Each year hundreds of student-athletes around the country elect to end their respective college careers to tackle another challenge: professional athletics.

In the past 12 months, LSU track star Xavier Carter, football quarterback JaMarcus Russell and basketball standout Glen Davis have all cut their college careers short to pursue the difficulty and riches accompanied with the next level.

Several coaches, including LSU basketball coach John Brady and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski have expressed concern about the direction of their sports because of the growing number of players leaving school before their fourth season.

While some athletes like Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young and Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade prove they are ready for the next level, hundreds of others spend their rookie seasons playing reserve roles for the first times in their careers.

Former LSU forward Brandon Bass played two seasons for the Tigers before declaring for the NBA in 2005. Bass was a second-round pick of the New Orleans Hornets and has only played in 49 games in his two NBA seasons.

Matthew Maurer, an NBA draft expert for the popular Web site www.nbadraft.net, said Bass' decision cost him millions of dollars.

"Had he gone a year later and gotten into that first round, he would be making double and maybe triple what he is getting now," Maurer said. "Kids always make decisions for today without regard for tomorrow, and in this case I just think Brandon would have been better waiting it out."

In 2006 the NCAA agreed with many of the coaches' concerns, passing a policy for men's basketball stating that a player had to be one year removed from high school to enter the NBA draft. This meant that a player had to enroll in college for at least one year to be eligible to play professionally.

NCAA official David Berst said the rule was enacted to give players better information about their draft positions.

"All players should be able to learn their NBA value like a student-athlete," he said. "[A high schooler] does not get the same guidance as does a college kid."

One sport to remain free of this problem is women's basketball, where no player has ever opted to declare for the WNBA before the completion of her senior season.

A possible answer is the WNBA pay scale. Rookies in the WNBA make between $34,000 and $41,000 depending on where they are selected in the draft. The salary cap for an entire WNBA team is just under $700,000, which is just above the minimum rookie NBA salary of $412,718.

University of Tennessee All-American forward Candace Parker was the first athlete to publicly express interest in turning professional, but she said the deflated salary scale was a factor in her decision to stay.

"I'm coming back to Tennessee," Parker said following the Lady Volunteers' 59-46 National Championship victory over Rutgers University. "I'll be back wearing orange next year to hang the banner in 2007."

Although Parker may come back to school, Maurer said the WNBA will likely be the next sport to have its best players leave early.

"The rookie salary is not impressive," he said. "But if a sponsor like Nike or Adidas adds a couple of million dollars onto it, then it will be a different story."

Maurer said the situation will probably come to an unhappy solution because everyone has a differing opinion on the subject.

"There is no right answer," he said. "Some want no one to be able to leave in any sport, but that is not fair because of guys like LeBron [James] who excel at young ages, and others want people to be able to leave freely, but that is not fair either because of guys getting misleading information like [Bass]. The real problem is trying to get players to understand what is valid and just who they can trust when planning the next 15 years of their future. Hoping an 18-year-old kid can accurately decide his future on his own is unrealistic."