College hoops fans complain a lot. It's true, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. There's a major difference in complaining about something you hate -- "College basketball stinks, it's SOOO boring, LOL" -- and complaining about something you love. The former is just annoying. The latter is downright patriotic.

One such object of complaint is the one-and-done rule. No one really seems to like it. Coaches don't like it. Elite talent doesn't like it. Fans, aside from the selfish benefit of getting to see the best young talent in the country play college hoops for a few months, don't much seem to care for it, either.

What's interesting about the one-and-done rule, though, are the differences between its theoretical faults and its practical application. Theoretically, the one-and-done sets up an exploitative system that prevents NBA-ready players from earning their money as soon as possible, instead forcing them into a year of amateur-status limbo.

In practice, though, only a handful of players are held back by the one-and-done rule each year. From Rush the Court:

After another summer of loud belly-aching, moaning and groaning about how the NBA’s one-and-done rule is methodically destroying college basketball as we know it, we’re left with the fact that, in reality, only eleven players from the prep class of 2009 found their way into the 2010 NBA Draft pool. As it turns out, approximately 90% of the RSCI Top 100 players from last year’s freshman class will return to play another season of college basketball in 2010-11. And this is not unusual. In the four NBA Drafts where one-and-doners were forced to attend at least one year of college (2007-10), there have been a total of 35 such players, or around nine per season. There are obvious problems with the NBA’s one-year rule that we won’t get into here, but we shouldn’t be losing our heads over what amounts to a handful of players each season.

In short, there are lots of really talented prep players that make their way into college hoops each year, but by the end of each class' first season, only a few of those players prove they're NBA-ready.

Such data doesn't exactly nullify the theoretical concerns with the one-and-done rule. After all, if John Henson could have gotten an NBA team to give him a guaranteed contract after high school, even if he wasn't ready for the NBA (and he wasn't), well, whose fault is that? Not Henson's. The one-and-done rule exists to make NBA franchises look less dumb. It's an insurance policy against irrational exuberance.

If anything, Rush the Court's numbers lead us to a conclusion already supported by most fans and coaches: A hybrid rule would work best. A handful of the most talented players should have the opportunity to jump to the NBA immediately after high school; presumably, this number is about the same as the one that makes the post-frosh leap each year. The rest of the country's talent can commit to a school and receive a two- or three-year guarantee of college hoops before the pros become an option again.

Everybody wins, mostly. It certainly beats the current setup, even if that setup isn't quite as bad in reality as we all pretend.