You know, I keep telling myself cynically that there’s little the NCAA can do these days that irritates me, but they keep finding ways to prove me wrong.
My favorite part of the piece is this, one step past getting leads from TMZ:
And how did the N.C.A.A. find out about Tanesha’s airfare? Get this: The N.C.A.A. heard about it from her ex-boyfriend, a convicted felon who, according to Ryan’s cousin, Jaeh Thomas, had once seen Ryan as “his big ticket.” When the relationship turned ugly, he vowed to exact revenge on Tanesha by calling in the N.C.A.A., according to Thomas and Mike McAllister, Ryan’s father. If this were a court proceeding, the ex-boyfriend’s credibility could be challenged and his motives questioned. Instead, in its crazed obsession with its extra-legal rules, the N.C.A.A. is willing to serve the interests of an angry ex-boyfriend who wants to ruin an athlete’s career to get back at his mother. It almost defies belief.
Not really. We just wish it did.
Get The Picture 
Instead of Congress bickering about the BCS, they should be looking into the totalitarian regime of the NCAA
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The most horrific part of that is that it’s selectively totalitarian.
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Just like any system set up to prevent wrongdoing, the NCAA gets people caught up in it’s nets and can’t seem to start all over in an investigation when the complexion changes. Instead, they become the reverse of the joke about the kid looking for the live pony when all the horseshit is under the Christmas Tree;- they look for the dead pony or try to kill it in their search for wrongdoing. Then, in the egregious football cheating scandals, they take their sweet time to vet a few people who don’t know crap or are small fry and find reasons not to find the programs themselves guilty.
When we truly have had enough, we will take action. It’s comparable to the cell phone ads showing people talking on their phone and complaining how the phone companies rob them while all the time they are on the phone, guys with masks are taking things from them in front of their eyes. This is no different. Who is running with the flag to plant and resist this monster we have created to protect us from the cheaters? Who has the where-with-all to legally resist? You Senator? Congress?
If you aren’t willing to lead a charge then don’t be frustrating us with shit we read every day and I don’t want to see anyone complaining if politics enters the picture. We are practically inviting those Bozos into the fray with such articles as these that are calculated to raise our angst without putting forth a solution. Shall we call our Congressman?
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It seems to me that student athletes could sue the NCAA over civil rights violations since it is pretty much agreed that one has to go through college in most sports to be able to get more money in the professional drafts. By haphazardly accusing, investigating, and punishing the athletes they are in fact taking away a citizen’s right to the “pursuit of happiness”, a Constitutional guarantee.
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There is no mention of the “pursuit of happiness” in the Constitution. It’s in the Declaration of Independence.
The Constitution is law. The Declaration of Independence was never law, it was a resolution, essentially a statement of shared opinion.
Even if “pursuit of happiness” were in the Constitution, it would be far too vague to be enforceable at all.
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you are 100% right about the source of the pursuit of happiness phrase but what I think Meg was actually suggesting there might be something that is a Constitutional right and that is called Due Process because they (the NCAA) are taking this young man’s property right(a free ride to school) without allowing him notice of the charges,a right to contest the charges and the right to confront his accuser.. I say Meg was right for the wrong reason. There should not be something this wrong without some sort of remedy.IMO
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So the NCAA is taking a page from the Government’s playbook? Stay classy.
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