College basketball season won't start for another four months, but thanks to players like Xavier Henry, the biggest impacts on the game are happening right now.

Henry was one of the key trickle-down effects of John Calipari's move from Memphis to Kentucky. The 6-foot-6 stud originally inked his letter of intent Memphis, then changed his mind and signed a faux NLI with Kansas after Cal bolted for the Bluegrass.

On Sunday, though, it became quite clear just how "committed" Henry -- a consensus top-10 high school player -- really was/is.

Kansas City Star reporter Brady McCullough wrote a good-sized takeout on the Henry family, specifically pointing out that college wasn't exactly priority No. 1 for Xavier or his brother C.J. (who is piggy-backing a scholarship after playing pro baseball for a few years).

Turns out, the family patriarch, Carl, didn't take too kindly to the article and reiterated to a Kansas City radio station that his boys were essentially above "the system." In this case, Carl wants his kids to have the fame and fortune, but he can't accept the news-outlet criticism that comes along with it. Think of it as a soccer mom on steroids.

That brings me to this:

At what point does NCAA college basketball decide it isn't going to let an individual family decide the fate of a team, league or even national title? The current system is broke, and it's taken us fewer than five years to figure that out.

As it stands, basketball players must be a year removed from high school in order to be eligible for the NBA draft. The NBA has decided for its own reasons that 19 years of age -- not 18 -- is a better fit for its league.

It's time for that to end.

The NCAA and NBA needs to put a stop to the actions of families like the Henrys, and here's how it can work.

• Immediately, players coming out of high school are eligible for the NBA Draft. The guys with the "NBA bodies" we hear so much about can go ahead and do what they want to do anyway. They can covet their millions and never worry about setting foot in a college classroom.
• On the flipside, players who commit to a college program must commit to college basketball for at least two years. If they decide college isn't the place for them, they can play overseas until that two-year window is up. Once it is, they are eligible for the Draft.
• Foreign-born players must adhere to the same time frame; granted, it stands to reason that most of them will simply remain with the same national and professional teams they are already a part of in their respective countries.

No one is going to simply accept this change without looking at the risks and rewards.

Since the NBA is the one making more money, we'll start there.

The risks associated with this change would include a handful of high-school players cluttering up the draft, forcing teams to spend a few more dollars scouting another realm of the game (granted, many big-time high-school matchups are not in bigger cities so that they can be televised; trips to Chicago, Los Angeles or Cleveland aren't that big of a deal).

The rewards, however, would prove extremely fruitful to the NBA.

For those players who are ready or near ready out of high school, the respective NBA teams get them a year earlier, get to start working with them and putting them through their training regiment. Instead of worrying about whether that kid is going to be eligible for the second semester of his freshman year in college, the NBA team has got him working on post-up moves, 3 pointers and dead lifts.

For those players who commit to college and then go pro, the NBA is getting a player who has spent two seasons refining a game that may have been a hair short of NBA expectations two years earlier. So while the number of players who bust after going straight from high school to the pros may increase, the ones who stick around college for two years then give NBA scouts further evaluation, decreasing the wasteful picks on those types of players.

That's a wash.

And how about the college game? What are its benefits?

For starters, fathers like Carl Henry are going to be less likely to decide they need to keep talking if his sons are committed to schools like Kansas for two years instead of one. In Carl Henry's mind, it doesn't matter what he says because this time next year, Xavier and C.J. are going to be drafted 1-2, with C.J. getting traded to the Knicks to play alongside Xavier, LeBron James and Dwight Howard (fantasy land is great, isn't it?).

The reduction for college basketball is losing out on the Carmelo Anthonys of the game, guys who went to school for a year, played their butts off and led or nearly led their schools to a national title.

Granted, that also brings us back to another benefit.

The two most-prominent one-and-done players from two seasons ago -- Derrick Rose and O.J. Mayo -- have both been reported to have their names revolving around scandals that led them to Memphis and Southern Cal, respectively. Both players were likely NBA picks coming out of high school.

Instead, thanks to the NBA's eligibility requirements, they went to college for a year (passing enough classes in their first semesters in order to be college eligible for the whole season) and brought both of their schools and coaches headaches.

It isn't coincidence that neither coach who brought in those two players are now out of their current jobs. Calipari left for Kentucky, likely knowing his Memphis team was going to be hampered by the NCAA. Then-USC coach Tim Floyd resigned, and he'll probably have to be an NBA assistant if he ever wants to coach again.

Maybe I'm off on this, but don't the game's indiscretions seem less likely to happen if players, coaches and administrators know the NCAA could catch wind of payoffs and grade changing while the player is still on campus and not eligible for the NBA? No, I'm not naive enough to think that sort of stuff ends entirely.

But whatever, right?

The current system seems to work just fine.

Unless you're Carl Henry.