Obama: NCAA can’t be NBA ‘farm system’

Former president Barack Obama shared NBA superstar LeBron James’ perspective on how to improve the NCAA, which James called “corrupt” on Tuesday in the wake of multiple reports implicating major college players, coaches and programs in the FBI’s investigation into illegal recruiting.

Obama spoke in an an off-the-record panel at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at MIT last weekend, and his comments were ultimately leaked by libertarian publication Reason. The former president said the NBA would be smart to embrace a well-structured G-League “so that the NCAA is not serving as a farm system for the NBA with a bunch of kids who are unpaid but are under enormous financial pressure.” He said that type of system “won’t solve all the problems but what it will do is reduce the hypocrisy.”

“It’s just not a sustainable way of doing business,” Obama said of the NCAA.