Mike Celizic

Blake Griffin made the right decision — in fact, the only sane decision — in choosing to leave Oklahoma after two seasons and move on to a full-time job in the NBA.

If I had written that about anyone 20 years ago, I would have been hooted out of town by people who believed that the world was a better place when basketball players had to stay in school for four years before being eligible to play for pay. Even 10 years ago, there would have been voices decrying what they would have seen as a premature move to the big time by a player who could benefit by more seasoning in college.

But today, Griffin’s decision was a foregone conclusion. He’s the best player in college, a man among boys, a big and mobile force of nature whose game is more than ready for the NBA. If his 22.4 points a game and 14.4 rebounds a game weren't enough evidence, watch him on any number of highlight-reel dunks. He's ferocious.

I’m sure there is sorrow among Sooner fans at his departure after just two seasons, but even there I’d be surprised if anyone blames him for moving on. They did have him, after all, for two seasons, and that’s a long time for great players to stick around these days.

And there is a recognition that it would have been risky at best and stupid at worst to spend another year playing for free when he could have been playing for millions of dollars. Get hurt in college, and your career may be over. Get hurt in the pros, and there is still guaranteed money to help you make the transition to real life.

The main reason to go to college — besides the parties on your parents’ dime — is to gain the skills necessary to earn a good living in the real world. After two seasons’ exposure to higher education, Griffin has those skills. The likely No. 1 pick in the NBA draft will be looking at close to $10 million for his first four years of work — guaranteed. It may not be what the CEO of a bailed-out bank makes, but it’s more than his classmates will be making when they get their degrees two years hence. It’s more than most of them will make in their entire working lives.

So, even if you’re one of the nostalgia-plagued hold-outs for the good old days when players had no choice but to spend four years in college before turning pro, you have to accept that there’s no putting this genie back in the bottle.

The NBA and its players association seem to have gotten this on right. Back in 2005, the league and the union both became alarmed at the flood into the NBA of high-school kids who were neither physically nor psychologically mature enough to play in the pros. They had different reasons for their objections. The NBA team owners didn’t like committing millions of dollars to kids who might never develop into everyday players. The players didn’t like a bunch of kids sopping up money that might have been put to better use by dues-paying union members who needed to add another Ferrari to their fleet.

So a compromise was struck. The league got a rule requiring prospective draftees to be at least 19 years old and one year removed from their class’ high-school graduation. The players union got a rookie pay scale that ended the enormous amounts of money being dumped in the laps of players who had never competed against real men.

Now, players like Griffin get to spend at least one year — in his case two — in college, where they can begin to learn to live away from home and in something resembling the real world. And fans like us can be spared another Kwame Brown.

It isn’t a perfect solution for either the pro game or the college version. Because the best players leave college as soon as they’re assured of being a top draft pick, the days of great college dynasties are over. There will never be another Lew Alcindor or Bill Walton playing center as a senior for a team that wins championship after championship after championship.

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And the kids coming into the pro game no longer have the solid grounding in basic basketball skills that they did when college martinets drilled them ceaselessly on setting picks, blocking out and hitting free throws.

On the other hand, the college game is now more open to more teams than ever. The same powerhouse teams tend to rise to the top because of their recruiting, but no team is more than one great player away from an exciting ride — for a year or two.

A team like Oklahoma can get back among the elite programs in the land, thanks to the efforts of one phenomenal player. And now that they’re there, they can build on their success to attract more top talent to keep the good times rolling. So even if Griffin didn’t give the Sooners four years, he gave them new life among the game’s top teams.

These days, it’s the most any program can hope for.

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