When Elite Is No Longer Elite
By: Oregon Hoops
August 28, 2013
For college basketball coaches, there are significant benefits to the club / travel circuit, more commonly known as AAU basketball. In the years before AAU really gained momentum, coaches had to travel the country watching potential recruits beat up on skinny, overmatched kids. The talent level was sometimes so disparate the players had no real business taking the same court--men against boys. This all began to change first with the passage of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which replaced the Amateur Athletic Union as the governing body for Olympic sports and caused the AAU to tighten its focus on youth sports, particularly basketball. Further, the NCAA revised its recruiting windows, which freed college coaches from taking time out in the midst of their own demanding seasons to travel and watch high school games. The advent of the summer basketball circuit has provided welcome relief in allowing coaches to focus their recruiting travel on spring and summer months that don't directly conflict with their own schedule, when they can be more efficient by watching dozens of high quality players in the same gyms at the same time. Think Vegas in July, or Basketball Mecca, when coaches gather by the hundreds and teams by the thousands to put on a single show of the best of the best. The only drawbacks of these massive basketball gatherings for head coaches have been the oppressive summer heat and the networking benefits afforded assistant coaches seeking greener pastures (wink).
That said, there is a growing threat to this efficiency in the form of the vast proliferation of AAU programs. In recent years, it seems every parent thinks their kid is elite, every player thinks they will make the next level, and every coach thinks they should run an AAU program. Here at Oregon Hoops, we are tracking over 40 Oregon club programs, more than 30 of them covering multiple age groups. Most of these programs are centered around Portland, Vancouver, Salem and Eugene. Although we have made every effort to be comprehensive, we are surely missing some lower profile programs or teams. Some programs run 5th grade through high school (25 of those), and at least 15 of these extend in certain years from 3rd grade to high school. Ten competitive (non-school) groups operate just one grade level, and another 5 groups operate at 2-3 grade levels. That's over 225 teams in one major market area. Moreover, at some grade levels programs are offering A and B teams or even C teams. Let's conservatively add another 25 B or C teams, so now we're up to 250 teams. Consider that at 8 to 10 players per team, we're looking at 2,000 to 2,500 club players in Oregon's major metro areas alone. Do we really have the "elite" talent in Oregon to fill 250 teams, or is the talent pool being heavily diluted by the proliferation of programs and teams? Most likely it's the latter, and we've passed beyond the point of elite into teams and players that are great, good, school, rec-level, and not-so-good. It's hard to have a scientific answer here, but the reasonable man theory seems to imply that there must be a saturation point in each market. We are guessing that dividing line has been crossed the past few years in most markets.
If you're a college coach, you want to see the best talent from each city and state, assembled to view in April, June or July, depending on the NCAA's endlessly revised viewing periods. If too many teams are playing in these concentrated windows, it would start to again approach the high school scouting situation. Therefore, elite tournaments and leagues (think EYBL/Peach Jam, UA Association, etc) are serving an important role in filtering and narrowing the scope of teams and players that should be considered elite and most suitable for scouting. But if elite tournament and leagues help mitigate this affect in the short run, it's not a perfect filter and great players would be missed. Coaches also need and probably want more options than two or three major circuits, especially those looking for D-II, D-III NAIA, or community college talent. There must be a middle ground, a circuit big enough to fill quality college rosters but small enough to prevent watching a diluted mass of games.
What about the impact the increased program competition has on the programs themselves? It's harder to cover your costs and field elite talent if any Dad with a few good parent and player relationships can throw together a school or all-star team and operate more cheaply. Now, as a program director, you face pricing pressure and a siphoning off of talent. Not an ideal situation. What parents and players need to consider are the quantity and quality of the resources being provided. Does the one-off team offer a quality facility complete with ongoing skill development clinics, deep pools of players to compete against, access to SAQ training, etc. If not, just know that like anything else, there is the factor of getting what you pay for.
Finally, if you're a coach considering forming a new team, simply recognize that while that may be the best thing for you and/or your kid, you are also contributing to the dilution of talent in your area. That's ok if you are offering something unique or value-added to the local community. For instance, if your program will have after-school study programs or serve at-risk youth. But if your new team simply results in two average teams instead of one great team, your new team is not necessarily the best thing for the quality of basketball in your area. Perhaps your child would be just as well-served by utilzing the services of a high quality, existing program. And you never know, college coaches just might be grateful to you for exercising some restraint.
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