One-and-done should be satisfying to no one

It has become as much a part of the college basketball lexicon as high picks and slam dunks.

One-and-done.

Los Angeles is a poster boy for this. Last year, O.J. Mayo had a cup of coffee at USC and Kevin Love took a sip at UCLA.

Wednesday, DeMar DeRozan blew a kiss to the Trojans. Thursday, Jrue Holiday said bye-bye, Bruins.

Freshmen become men, at least in their own eyes. Having recently learned to shave, they convince themselves they are ready to take on Kobe. Not to mention checkbooks, agents, investments and 15,000 screaming people every couple of nights.

This is what we have come to in major sports. Send our 18- and 19-year-olds out to become gladiators. If they have the physical skills, and we can make a quick buck off them, go for it. Sure, they get paid lots too, even if a bank statement befuddles them and they end up, in 10 years, with the social skills of a hungry bear in a dumpster.

This is the land of opportunity, and people should have the right to make a buck whenever and however they want to. Teams of lawyers will protect that right at all costs, and for 30%.

Sure, some have made it big. Mayo and Love are good pros. Kobe never even passed through college. Nor did Kevin Garnett.

But more end up with a seat in the back of the bus and a couple of years of begging for 10-day contracts.

We have just completed the annual extravaganza known as March Madness. The NCAA protects that brand just as Yahoo and Google protect theirs, and the driving force behind that, of course, is the multibillion-dollar CBS contract that keeps all the troughs full at NCAA headquarters.

We make out our brackets, plunk down a few bucks to enter our office pools and root for Old State U., especially if we have Old State U. in our pool. Which is fine, although illegal.

No harm, no foul. Even when we know it is all based on a dishonest premise, perpetuated by the NCAA, which walks around with pockets full of money and talks about the college experience of its student-athletes. In many cases, that is accurate. Such as at North Carolina this season, where players passed on the pros and won the title.

But the other side of the coin is a tournament and a system that promote and perpetuate hired guns. It is the be-all and end-all, the big show.

The guys on the end of the bench are happy to be there to cut down the nets for Dear Alma Mater. But the guys scoring the points are searching the stands for the agents, who, incidentally, have better access to them at most campuses than their sociology teachers.