Let’s be honest: If the Wisconsin Badgers weren’t kicking butt right now, it would be harder to look at the end of the Kobe King story (from a UW point of view) with a generous heart. Yet, as this story gains a measure of closure, with King’s transfer to the Nebraska Cornhuskers earlier this week, it’s worth making the point that young people need support and affirmation in their lives even when they make choices we don’t like. In fact, it is PRECISELY when a young person makes a questionable choice that support is needed. This frames the discussion around King, whose departure thankfully did not have a negative effect on the 2020 Badgers. Wisconsin is rocking and rolling after ripping up Michigan’s formidable defense on Thursday night in Ann Arbor.
The title of this story is not sarcastic. It’s the truth. Genuinely: Good for Kobe King. He wanted a different direction for his career. He found it relatively quickly. That’s an encouraging outcome for him.
We don’t have to dive into another familiar argument about whether college athletes should be paid. Regardless of your views of that particular issue, we can all agree that human beings make specific choices and then reconsider them. Kobe King might not have had a “paid job” as a Wisconsin basketball player, but it certainly was an important responsibility for him. It didn’t work out.
Whether or not a person pulls down a take-home paycheck, that person was engaged in a public endeavor (playing college basketball) people care about. College athletes face this reality all the time: Do they really want to play in one place and one situation? If they realize, midway through their journey, that going elsewhere might be better for them, should any of us insist that inclination is wrongheaded or shortsighted?
If a job is not working out for us, we would very possibly consider walking away from that job and starting fresh somewhere else – maybe not in a different state, but certainly at a different company if we wanted to do the same type of work.
Sure, we all know that playing college basketball isn’t a regular job – only 353 Division I teams exist in the United States, with only eight to 10 players playing for one team on a normal game night. This means no more than roughly 3,500 young men play more than table-scrap minutes (let’s say 10 minutes) per game every season. This is a pretty select group engaged in pursuing a select opportunity.
It is an even more special opportunity at the Power Five conference level, which is where Kobe King resided at Wisconsin… and where he will be staying at Nebraska.
This chance doesn’t come around for anyone and everyone. It’s a limited fraternity (or, for women’s college basketball players, sorority). Given the special, fragile, and very temporary (no more than four years) nature of collegiate athletics, an athlete has to make these years count. If, for whatever reason, he doesn’t feel comfortable in a given place, it’s not a scandal or cause for outrage (barring some exceptional circumstances).
A young person just wants to relocate and find a new path, something Americans of any age should be free to pursue.
All of this aside: Kobe King could have picked a Big Ten school with a stronger position and reputation than Nebraska. He didn’t. Imagine how we all would feel if he had gone to Marquette (not saying that was ever likely, but imagine the result just the same).
Nebraska is a relatively harmless choice… but even if Kobe King had chosen to play for Iowa or Purdue, that wouldn’t change the basic reality that athletes deserve to have freedom of movement. We should wish them well… and wish that when they play Wisconsin the next time, they’ll get their butts kicked.
Sincerely, good for you, Kobe King. Have a prosperous career… and the Badgers will smile when they face you next, trying to defeat a friend in good-natured and spirited competition, just as any brother would in a backyard one-on-one game.