I don't understand the original post. Why would players be given another year? By what right? Basketball is a fall-winter and a little bit of spring sport, while football is a fall and a little bit of winter sport.
Players already have been given an extra year, back when they increased varsity eligibility from 3 years to 4. Now we want to go to 5?
I would like to see the scholarship limit increased to 17 or 18, at least. Many more players suffer injuries now, and one injury to a key rotation player can wreck a team's entire season, so teams need to be able to recruit for good depth. Programs will fund more scholarships, and stockpile players, which will encourage more athletes to choose to concentrate on basketball earlier with a better chance of getting a scholarship. Right now, there are not enough good recruits available to stock more than a handful of programs. In the 2009 class top 100, there were 38 recruits who did not have a good first season for the school to which they committed, and of those 38 players, 21 did not have a good season for any school during their 4 years of eligibility. With only maybe 60 recruits being worth signing and 350 programs chasing them, a school like Cal has little chance to get more than one or two a year, and just that will not guarantee continued team success.
The stockpiled players would get several years to improve and maybe help their teams. In the 1950s and 1960s, Cal had JV teams where players could get experience and hone their skills. Bob Dalton, a mostly unheard of JV player, made the jump from JV to start on Cal's NCAA Championship team, and was the team's best man defender, shutting down Oscar Robertson and Jerry West on consecutive nights. I realize resurrecting JV basketball is a pipe dream, but I still think teams need more good players, and the prize of winning a scholarship might get more athletes interested in basketball, and get more good players onto more rosters.
