Enough of the hypocrisy: every other top-class basketball program is trying to copy Kentucky, which makes rooting against them so outdated and pointless

The NCAA tournament field is down to the Sweet 16 weekend of games, featuring 15 collegiate programs and the Kentucky Wildcats, a D-League team that is still officially unaffiliated with the NBA.

John Calipari’s team will take the court on Friday night featuring three freshmen starters in De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Edrice Adebayo – all of whom are expected to go in the first round in June’s NBA draft, with Fox and Monk slated to be selected among the first few picks. This one-and-lottery-pick approach is the way it’s been at Kentucky since Calipari arrived in 2009. He had sim players taken in both the 2012 and 2015 drafts, and five in 2010. Eighteen freshmen have left Lexington after a single season since his debut season, including some of the biggest NBA stars today: John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns. Five more players were a bit slower to develop and suffered the unique Kentucky humiliation of only being able to go pro after two years in college. For shame!

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Kentucky’s ability to attract some of the best high school recruits in the nation every year, quickly form them into a team that wins, lose the bulk of them to the NBA and then do it all right over again has predictably earned the program its share of detractors, led by collegiate sport’s vocal “The Right Way” crowd. These are the people who want to believe NCAA sports are to be a Rockwell painting brought to life, with young men learning at the side of their sage coaches for four years on how to be the good and true leaders of a new generation.

“I want you armed for life,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said 12 years ago, barely able to keep a straight face on camera. “I want you to develop as a player. I want you to develop as a student, and I want you to develop as a human being.” He then added, to cash in for himself and instantly reveal how fake the previous sentiments were about a system that earns billions while paying athletes nothing: “That’s why my card is American Express.”

But through all of Coach K’s self-congratulatory propaganda – and there’s been far more than just that 30-second AmEx ad from a decade ago – what he doesn’t admit is that he’s trying to do the same thing Calipari is. The Kentucky coach is just more honest about it. Duke only pretends it’s still molding leaders. Four freshman bolting to the NBA draft in the last two years suggest Coach K is not as concerned about his players “developing as students” as he might like us all to think. In fact, Duke product Kyrie Irving believing the earth is flat suggests the Blue Devils aren’t going to class or learning beyond basketball at all.

“Coach Cal tells all his recruits – he told me – ‘I get guys to where they want to go. I like to make their dream come true,’” Davis said before the 2012 NBA draft when he went No1 overall. “He runs this program as if it were an NBA team. He lets us run up and down the floor … teaches us a lot of things that players in the NBA do. I would say we’re kind of getting a head start on what’s going to happen at the next level.” Today Davis is a four-time NBA All-Star and makes more than $30m a year on and off the court.

Kentucky is college basketball’s one open and unabashed NBA factory and recruits keep rewarding the program for its honesty. Five of the top 32 players in the 2017 class as rated by ESPN have committed to come to Lexington next year to replace Fox, Monk and Adebayo, and that many more will undoubtedly roll on through in 2018, as well.

The kids that go to Kentucky are signing up because they want careers as professional basketball players. Calipari isn’t forcing them away from their desired futures as school teachers or astronauts, demanding they don’t receive four-year educations. These are players who have worked their whole lives to be NBA-quality and are going to the college that gives them the best chance to go pro. It’s the same way the nation’s top-rated flute recruit is probably going to pick Juilliard over Kentucky.

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There’s not a recruit who lands with a power conference program that hasn’t at least entertained thoughts of a professional basketball career. The rest of the Sweet 16 is filled with top-level programs: North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, Arizona and so on. The “underdogs” are probably Xavier, Butler and No1 seed Gonzaga. Kentucky isn’t beating up tiny research colleges that don’t offer athletic scholarships and play in old, musty, 200-seat gyms. They’re just taking on an even playing field the smartest way possible. They know that none of us actually care more about a player’s grade point average than his scoring average.

That’s why continuing to root against Kentucky feels so outdated and pointless. It’s rooting against innovation. It’s rooting against best practices and actual, not faux, integrity. It’s buying into the idea that the NCAA tournament, which generates more than a billion in ad revenue, is somehow about amateurism and academics.

Stop pretending. You’re concerned about your bracket, not tournament players missing classroom time. Embrace Kentucky and their stars. Root for the overdog. The Kentucky Wildcats are the only honest team in college basketball.