By
Connor Doyle
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Part 1 of an interview with Jim Livengood
The most important man in the UA athletic department may also be the least recognizable. While Lute Olson and John Mackovic are the faces most commonly associated with UA athletics, UA athletic director Jim Livengood exists only in the background.
Livengood sat down with the Arizona Daily Wildcat in the wake of the defections of four UA men's basketball players to the NBA. In today's segment of a two-day, two-part interview, he discussed his opinions on Arizona players leaving early for the NBA and the state of college basketball in general.
Wildcat: Since this would be the issue that's most pertinent to your job right now, how do you feel about the Arizona players who have entered the draft early?
Livengood: I certainly don't begrudge them at all. Their goal obviously is to be NBA players. I would like, from a very selfish standpoint, for them to stay in school, and not for the reason that most people think - I think that every year in school adds something.
None of us are guaranteed what's going to happen, physically or otherwise, and I think that the more education you have, the better off you are in terms of those kinds of things.
I want our guys to have great experiences and things like that, but if you look at the attendance in the NBA, and the things happening with all the young people going out, at some point in time, somebody's not going to make it.
I think back to (JaRon) Rush last year of UCLA, because I watched him play - I was assigned by the NCAA basketball committee to be in Minneapolis, so I had UCLA that first and second round.
He played two games where he was unbelievable - probably as good as any player we've had here in the past three or four years - (but) he didn't make it. And the sad part of that is that it happens all the time.
Am I saying that (our early entrants) shouldn't go? I'm not saying that at all. I want what's best for them. And I think that the more education you can get, at this stage, I think the better off you are. There are only so many NBA teams, and so many spots on the rosters.
Wildcat: Isn't it bothersome to you when you see a student-athlete making such a potentially disastrous decision with their career?
Livengood: It is. The hardest thing is that in this situation, we're considered to be almost like parents of all our student-athletes. You want the very best for them. You don't want them to get hurt, you don't want them to have bad experiences, you want everything to be right for them. But we know that this isn't always the case.
The agents out there, and the pros out there, will tend to think of it from the standpoint of 'well what if they come back, and it doesn't enhance their stock, or they get hurt?' But from the other standpoint, what if they do go out and it doesn't work out for them? You can't come back and play - you've already given that up - but you're not giving up anything if you stay in school. You can still go on and play. So I think there's more risk by going out.
Wildcat: Do you think that players leaving college early is a sign of the times and the price that top collegiate programs have to pay to stay competitive?
Livengood: I think it is, and I think it's one of those things that naively we tend to tell ourselves, that the chances of having the great players - not the good players, but the great players - more than two years is nil.
So from my standpoint and the coaches' standpoint, you tend to tell yourself that even two years in a university setting is better than no years.
At the same time, in the back of my mind, I keep thinking that if we do a great job, and the setting is very good, maybe we'll convince more young people to stay three and four years. Having said that, I'm afraid that the reality is that the great players are going to be here two or three years at the most.
Wildcat: Here's a hypothetical: If given the choice of having either a team where all the players would stay four years and be academic All-America and make the tournament most years, but not be a top 25 program, or a dominant program like UA's now - but know that most of the great players are not going to be in college for more than two years - which would you prefer?
Livengood: Clearly, if it were my choice, I would choose the first option.
I would choose to have a program that graduates players, has a chance to be in the top 25, went to the tournament, and take our chances on that given year when we might be able to win it all.
I think that would more clearly illustrate my philosophy. Our goal here is to try and educate young people and have them get their degrees.
Now this may be na•ve, but I think that we can do both. But in the present environment, it's going to be extremely hard because these things tend to become very cyclical. This year, for example, if (former UA forward) Richard (Jefferson) didn't decide to go pro - and this is just a hypothetical - maybe nobody else would either. I think those things have a little bit of a snowball effect.
Wildcat: Do you think that the NCAA paying players would effect players' decisions to leave early?
Livengood: In my opinion, no.
Now some people may disagree with me, but here's why: the NCAA would never be able to come up with the amount of dollars that would allow that to make sense.
A developmental league (where players get paid) is worried about one thing - basketball players. In college, for the NCAA to have any chance of defending it in court, they would not only have to pay males and females equally, but all student-athletes in all the sports would have to be paid equally as well.
We need to restructure what we're doing financially, but we should throw out the paying of players and instead award scholarships totally based on need. We should be concerned with using financial aid to make sure that everyone has a comparable college experience.
