Here's to Kentucky's kids going from Big Blue to long green

I'm not a Kentucky basketball fan, never have been one, and have no reason to be one.

But, as I write this before the Wildcats' Final Four semifinal against Louisville on Saturday, I hope Kentucky wins the national-title Monday night. I think it would be funny for all those who are agitated by college players leaving for the NBA after one year of college to get even more annoyed. And to maybe confront some realities.

Kentucky has, perhaps, the players who will be the first two picks in the 2012 NBA draft and certainly two of the top three or four. They are freshmen. A sophomore Wildcat forward seems sure to leave for the pros, too. Which bugs some people.

The concept that those players are "using" college basketball and aren't true college students is hilarious. They are being forced to "use" it by the NBA, with the league's 7-year-old rule that its players must be no younger than 19 and be a full year removed from high school.

High-profile college programs like Kentucky's gladly let those players "use" them. They would be insane not to do so. The real using, of course, is done by the universities. Most specifically, by their athletic departments and their employees. Their paid employees, that is.

Kentucky Coach John Calipari, who has an annual salary of $3.8 million, has added another $350,000 in bonuses since the NCAA tournament began for reaching the regional semifinals, regional final and Final Four. If Big Blue Nation claims the national title Monday night, Calipari gets another $350,000.

That's OK, though, because Kentucky would surely make that money back and a lot more just from the merchandise it would sell from winning the championship.

The players, meanwhile, would get to prance around after Monday's game wearing free ballcaps and T-shirts to commemorate their achievements.

This isn't another "Pay the players" essay. The players haven't been smart and bold enough to organize before a Final Four or major bowl game and make some financial demands, so they get what they deserve. They all have their own agendas they feel they are artfully advancing by participating, anyway.

Just don't rip the one-and-dones. You'd do the same thing if you were them. Unless making millions instead of giving away your work strikes you as kooky.

"We refer to it as a problem," ESPN's Jay Bilas said Friday on ESPN Radio. "I'm thinking, 'What's the problem?' If a kid wants to be a professional, what's the problem with that?"

Bilas is one of my favorite analysts in sportscasting. He knows basketball and can communicate what he knows about it, but he isn't in the good-old-boys' hip pockets like many of his colleagues. He played at Duke and was an assistant coach for Mike Krzyzewski for three years, then he got his law degree.

"If the NBA has a rule that says they can only go in at age 19 after a year out of high school," Bilas said, "that's not colleges' issue.

"The NCAA can do a lot of things to incentive-ize a lot of players to stay, but they don't do it because it doesn't go with our money narrative that players need to be amateurs, which is ridiculous. ... We've got professional baseball players that are playing college football and nobody raises an eye about it. ... It's an issue of the NCAA wanting to keep all the money."

That's the simple truth, and most people are good with it. I suspect most fans don't want college players in revenue sports to be paid because they not only cling to the amateurism ideal, but because it might take money away from making their programs bigger and more powerful. There are always bigger salaries to pay the coaches, who have all the leverage if they're winners.

If you did toss a little bit of pay at the players on whose backs the money is made, that cash would have to come from somewhere else and someone else. That wouldn't do.

"The president of the NCAA makes two million bucks," Bilas said. "Nick Saban makes $5 million, all the Final Four coaches make millions.

"They've got these giant athletic departments, they build these huge, unbelievable facilities. And they're building all those things to attract talent.

"But there's no restriction on any other students making money. There's only a restriction on athletes making money, and it doesn't make any sense."

So I'm all for Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist getting the heck out of Lexington after Monday night and going off to get their own millions after just one year in school. It would be un-American to begrudge them their right to cash in on the talents they have worked to develop.

Besides, Kentucky will just dip back into the high school talent pool and pull out more cheap labor. "Diaper dandies," Dick Vitale calls them without a trace of irony.

More jerseys and T-shirts will be sold, more and larger donations to the programs will be accepted, more bonuses will be paid out to coaches. Saturday's games will be played in a domed football stadium and shown on a television network that is paying part of a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with the NCAA to air the games.

My suggestion to players on Monday night's winning team who are playing their last college games: Ditch the NCAA trinkets right away and start flashing your own championship merchandise. Tacky? Maybe. Fair? Absolutely.