There is only one sport that needs the age limit restriced and that is professional football. Other sports don’t need those late teen, early twenty years for their bodies to develop for the beating that they take on a weekly basis.

Sports like baseball and hockey have the perfect system with the minor leagues in order for those younger players to mature mentally and physically if necessary. Basketball is the only sport where height matters more than anything and there is usually not much growing taller once high school is over (there are rare cases of big vertical growth spurts in college, but it isn’t the norm). The mental maturity between 18-22 really isn’t that big of a gap if you remember back to those times yourself. It may even have gotten worse once you hit legal drinking age and more apt to make questionable decisions on that avenue. What needs to better controlled is the youth basketball league where these kids are raised as if everything is going to be handed to them, because they can put a ball through a hoop. Then we come to parenting which is a growing problem in this country. Sports have become a way out for many parents and not because they are good at it, but living that life through their kids.

So no, I don’t think the NBA needs to raise their age limit. We as people, human, parents, teachers and role models need to do a better job of raising our future, bringing kids back to reality, letting them experience failure and hard work. Getting back to real education is the key to raising a more respectable group of human beings for many years to come.

Gibbs, the NFL rule isn’t one of age it is physical maurity. Almost 90% of college football players experience a huga amount of growth in their freshman and sophomore years. If there were players that could supply the NFL with the kind of play young stars do in the NFL I’m sure they would be just as eager to bring them into the league.

Lets leave race out of this, while a way too large number of inner city kids have less than stellar up bringing it can’t be an excuse. There is way too many other family members to help raise every kid growing up these days. The whole family is responsible these days, a family that stays and raises together makes all the difference.