Later this week, some of college basketball’s best players will make the jump to the superstardom. The NBA draft is slated for Thursday night in New York and many of the last season’s stars will walk on stage and be presented with a hat and jersey, and shake hands with NBA commissioner David Stern.

Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin will be the first to make that walk. The Los Angeles Clippers, who hold the first pick, have already announced the Sooner forward will be their choice.

But following him will a line of players who spent just one year playing college basketball. That fact irks college coaches to no end.

Sooner coach Jeff Capel is among a very vocal majority who think the NBA’s four-year-old policy of making players ineligible for the draft until they’re at least one year out of school is undermining college basketball.

“I think it’s a really bad rule,” Capel said. “In my opinion, I think it makes a mockery of education in college. I also think it’s condescending on the NBA’s part.”

You can’t blame the players for making the leap. Among this year’s crop of underclassmen wanting to make the jump are four who just completed their first year of college basketball— USC’s DeMar DeRozan, Memphis’ Tyreke Evans, UCLA’s Jrue Holiday, Ohio State’s B.J. Mullens.

All are projected as first-round picks, but it will be a slight change from last year’s draft when four of the first five players taken were just one year removed from high school and six of the top 11 never didn’t return for their sophomore season.

Capel and those in his fraternity don’t have a problem with players who are ready entering the NBA draft. Their problem is the way the NBA exploits the college game by making them go to college at all.

Capel points to four of the biggest names in the league as reasons why truly elite players shouldn’t be forced to go to college.

LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett all went straight from high school to the NBA and they’re among the game’s biggest stars.

Of course, for every player who was able to start a sustainable NBA career without going to college, there’s dozens more who weren’t so fortunate.

Some would argue the NBA’s one-year rule is for their benefit, but that’s a ridiculous notion. Even Stern says so.

“This is not about the NCAA, this is not an enforcement of some social program,” Stern said. “This is a business decision by the NBA, which is: We like to see our players in competition after high school.”

But why so little of it?

Major League Baseball will draft players out of high school, but once they enter a four-year college, they’re not eligible for three years or until they turn 21.