The NBA prospect I’m most excited about won’t play in the NCAA Tournament this year. He won’t… The NBA prospect I’m most excited about won’t play in the NCAA Tournament this year. He won’t play in the NIT, either, and Dick Vitale won’t refer to him as a diaper anything. While most big time NBA prospects will have at least one of those things happen in a year, I can say I have no doubts about my predictions. That’s because his name is Brandon Jennings, and he’s playing basketball in Europe this year. Jennings attended Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, one of the best basketball high schools in the country. He was widely regarded as a top prospect during his senior year. Scout.com listed as its No. 1 overall high school player. He originally committed to Southern California but then opted instead to commit to Arizona. Later, Jennings worried if he would be academically eligible to play in college. He struggled with standardized testing, went through it a second time, and then was asked to take the test a third time. Instead of doing that, and worrying once again about his academic eligibility, Jennings started looking around at teams in Europe to play for. If this were the good ol’ days, Jennings would’ve just gone into the NBA straight out of high school. But the league has since raised its age minimum to 19. Now we have guys like Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose going to college for one year, then entering the NBA. But if what Jennings does works, and he leaves Europe and is drafted by an NBA team and has a decent-to-successful career, it could be revolutionary. He’s the first American player to go directly from high school to play professionally in Europe. And that could start a trend. Put yourself in one of these kids’ size 15-plus sneakers for a second. Better yet, put yourself in both sneakers for a second. Behind door one you have college, which you know you’re only going to attend for one season. One year of college education means mostly intro courses, plus additional tutoring sessions to make sure you can keep up with basketball and academics. But on the plus side, college basketball is great. You have the opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament, the best event in sports, be interviewed by Erin Andrews and run your campus. Then there’s door two. Behind it is a foreign country, a chance to play professionally and, best of all, a paycheck. By the way, Jennings signed a $1.2 million contract with Lottomatica Virtus Roma in Italy, and then he signed a $2 million endorsement deal with Under Armour. Not too bad for a high school education. Not every player who goes overseas will make that kind of money. But will the possibility of it be too much to keep players away? Sonny Vaccaro, a former sneaker company executive, arranged the Jennings deal. He has said that families of 12 other elite high school players have since contacted him about similar deals. Of course, he could just be making up such a figure to make on-the-fence players feel more comfortable about working out similar deals with him.’ But if 12 others did contact him, are we already on our way to seeing the destruction of college basketball? I don’t think so. There are always going to be talented athletes who want an education. There are going to be talented athletes who don’t want to leave the country and talented athletes who just want to play in college. The talent in Europe isn’t NBA-level by any means, and they play a different style game overseas. There’s absolutely no guarantee that Jennings will pick up the European style of basketball, which is bit more team-oriented and slower paced than over here. In his first few games, Jennings played about 17 minutes a game and shot the ball poorly. But conversely, he hasn’t been turning the ball over, either. He hasn’t been spectacular, but he hasn’t been bad enough to call his venture a failure. It’s still early in his season, obviously. I’ll be extremely interested in seeing how Jennings fares, and if he enters and is drafted in next year’s NBA Draft. Perhaps the smarter route to take to Europe is the Josh Childress one. Childress went to Stanford and was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks, where he played four seasons, averaging 11.1 points and 5.6 rebounds per game. Then, this past summer, he signed a three-year, $20 million contract with the Olympiacos of Greece. Not bad for 11 points a game. I don’t really think that people need to worry about this destroying American basketball, though. The great players will want to play here because that’s where past greats made their legacies and set their records. You can’t break those or be compared to them playing in Europe. If anything, this will take away from the bottom tier and some of the middle tier players, as well as formerly great ones now past their prime. It might even make the NBA more competitive. And we have Jennings to thank for this. Root for him to fail or succeed, whichever you prefer. But pay attention. We see greatness in sports all the time, but rarely do we see a revolution.