The Almighty NCAA Needs Cutting Down to Size

C'mon, all you big-name, high school basketball superstars, you need to accept a scholarship from XYZ State University and be a part of their great legacy of winning.

Oops! Apparently, I've just broken an NCAA rule and gotten dear ol' XYZ State into all kinds of trouble with the powers that regulate college recruiting. Assuming of course, that the NCAA can find XYZ State on their list of members.

Or have I just been exercising my freedom of speech?

More to the point, how can the NCAA expect XYZ State (or any real-life member institution) to regulate the free speech of people not under its control in any way?

In the real world of college athletics, North Carolina State University told one of its freshmen students, Taylor Moseley, to cease and desist from operating a Facebook group imploring the nation's number one prospect, John Wall, to choose NC State as the place to further his basketball ambitions.

The NCAA does have a tough job trying to police collegiate recruiting and prevent illicit under-the-table payoffs to highly-sought prospects. The institution's arrogance and inability to recognize that their member institutions and the fans of those institutions' athletic teams do not live in Flatland have made their task much more difficult than it needs to be.

The NCAA has a tremendous credibility problem with people who have followed its actions over a period of years. It has been highly inconsistent in the way it has enforced its rules and regulations. In cases where the actual payments of goods, services, and even cash have been admitted, little or no consequences have resulted. On the other hand, a small Division II NCAA member like Abilene Christian University can find itself in trouble because church members in the university community offered assistance the NCAA considered illegal to needy foreign athletes. According to reports, the fact that the foreign students were athletes was inconsequential to the church members giving the students assistance. Church members were concerned with doing what churches are supposed to do . . . help people in need.

It is reasonable for the NCAA to prevent university coaches, staff members, administrators, and other employees from giving money or other unauthorized financial aid to athletes. Perhaps it is reasonable to expect universities to have enough influence with their athletic boosters to prevent them from doing anything in violation of NCAA rules.

However, how can a university be expected to control the activities of a church in their community? Apparently the all-knowing NCAA has no problem expecting their rules to trump any other rules which come into conflict with them. The fact that churches have a God-given mission to feed the hungry and help the needy must take a back seat to the all-powerful NCAA.

Or in the case of the NCSU student, Mr. Moseley, the NCAA expects its precious rules to triumph over an individual's freedom of speech. In fact, an NCAA spokesperson claimed the censoring of the NC State Facebook group was not a free speech issue at all; rather it was just a recruiting issue.

However, the University ordered Moseley to take down the site even though its compliance director, Michelle Lee, admitted that the group was not causing any harm. Ms. Lee said she had to take the action she did because of NCAA regulations.

Adam Kissel, who works with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, was right on target when he said the NCAA can impose rules on its members, but those universities "can't enforce them if it means punishing students in any way for expressing an opinion."

I am sympathetic to North Carolina State's dilemma. It would have been nice if the administration at NC State had had the gumption to stand up to NCAA autocrats and defend its student's right to freely express his opinion that John Wall should come play basketball for the Wolfpack. However, the NCAA is virtually all-powerful and has shown in the past its willingness to make an example of member schools who buck the system. Thus, it should not surprise us that Ms. Lee bowed her knee before the almighty NCAA and sent out the "cease and desist" letter to Moseley even though she admits she did not agree with what it required the student to do.

What comes next might surprise anyone who knows how resistant I am to government involvement in the lives of citizens. However, the NCAA has evolved into a dictatorial autocracy over college sports in the U. S. It has no interest in disciplining its own excesses, so the only solution I see is for legislation to overhaul the NCAA and make it subject to the rule of law, rather than being a law unto itself in American collegiate athletics.

It is time to ask Congress to get involved. This NCAA disaster has gotten so out of hand that even the United States Congress couldn't mess it up worse than it already is. Why not bring the enforcement of right behavior into the justice system. Let "guidelines" be given the force of federal law with civil and, in some cases, criminal penalties imposed upon violators. Let the enforcement of those laws be equitable and those charged with violations be given full due process, including the right to face their accusers in open court. Let qualified jurists (rather than NCAA in house decision-makers who are beholden to the status-quo system in the NCAA) be charged with both enforcing the laws and protecting the rights of all associated parties.

No doubt, there are arguments to be made against this proposal. Perhaps it can be improved, but SOMETHING has to offer a better system that the sorry state of affairs governing collegiate athletics now.

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