NBA Draft Age Limit by the numbers

One and done is a common theme for college hoopsters. But now, players are bypassing college all together. Brandon Jennings graduated from high school and went to Europe for a year, and will likely be a first round pick in this year's draft. The latest: reports out of San Diego have a 17 year old, Jeremy Tyler, dropping out of high school to go play across the pond for two years, presumably before coming back to the NBA once he is eligible. But the question remains: should the NBA change its draft eligibility requirements?

By my count, 44 players have jumped early to the pros--although only 4 are leaving after a year on campus. While not all have hired agents, most of them will stay in the draft. The key to the NBA draft is that only first round picks get a guaranteed contract. So there are 30 draftees that will get paid big bucks; the rest have to hope they can earn their meal ticket. So if you count 5 international players and 5 seniors getting drafted in the first round, over half the players that have jumped early will not get a first round golden ticket. So clearly, there are a lot of players that get drafted late, and wash out very quickly.
Name a school, and chances are there is a player that left too early. An extreme example is at Ohio State-- Thad Matta has seen 5 players jump ship after one season in Columbus in the past 3 years. Greg Oden, sure. But when was the last time you saw Kostas Koufas on the highlight reel? (Probably not in a long time, since "reels" don't technically exist any more. But you get the idea).

So now that we have a sense of the numbers, the question is, should the NBA change their rule? In the NFL, the limit is 3 years after graduating high school. But perhaps a better rule is what baseball has--players are draft-eligible out of high school, but if they choose to go to college, they have to stay there for three years.

If you apply this to basketball standards, yes there would be a lot of guys rolling straight into the NBA (or at least trying to). But at the same time, forcing NCAA-bound players to develop their game would be a good middle ground, allowing college basketball to become at least a little more polished, as the players would become closer to a finished product, given three years of development to one. This compromise allows players like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and yes, even Ricky Rubio (the 18 year old Spanish PG) to dive right into the waters. But it could protect others like Kosta Koufos, William Avery and potentially Jeremy Tyler from leaving for presumed NBA riches too early.
It may not be a perfect solution, but no good compromise ever is.