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Message: [QUOTE="Fairfield Fan, post: 3990192, member: 6911"] The state of women's basketball in the U.S. seems akin to the situation with professional soccer. Really talented American players almost all decamp for Europe to play in the top leagues with the biggest salaries, rather than play in the U.S. pro league. Many either ignore the college game altogether, or leave early to get paid in Europe. And let's not forget that there essentially is no "college game" in European soccer. Great soccer talents are signed to contracts with junior teams of the professional franchises. They are developed by professional coaches employed by the big league clubs. So the kids get paid from early on. None of this wasting time with college, while, I might add, usually coming out without degrees, or having majored in highly suspect disciplines like "recreation management." I don't think it's so much a question of whether to come out of college early for the WNBA, but whether to turn pro and earn big bucks in Europe. The WNBA, after all, is just a summer league. Not the Big Time in terms of money. The excellent point was also made that the WNBA is far too small to accommodate all of the top talent that's coming out of American colleges. And having even more talent flood in in the form of undergrads seeking places on WNBA rosters would prove even more dysfunctional for the WNBA. [/QUOTE]