“Founded more than one hundred years ago as a way to protect student-athletes, the NCAA continues to implement that principle with increased emphasis on both athletics and academic excellence.”

The entry above is from the “About the NCAA” page of the NCAA website. As a practical matter, 99 percent of what the NCAA tries to do is prevent schools from gaining an unfair competitive advantage by recruiting violations, improper payments, academic fraud, etc. I didn’t know the NCAA had any legal standing to punish teams for felonies, although its rule book is seemingly as large and complex as the U.S. Tax Code.

With due respect for Jerry Sandusky’s victims, a former Baylor basketball player murdered a teammate and there were no NCAA sanctions against Baylor for “lack of institutional control.”

Similarly, since the NCAA has appointed itself God, why haven’t they come down on Virginia, where a male lacrosse player apparently stalked and then killed a female lacrosse player? And, of course, the numerous alleged rapes at Notre Dame have quietly disappeared, so shouldn’t the NCAA step in?

Even as an avowed right-wing, law and order, guilty-until-proven-innocent kind of guy, I think the NCAA has overreached. Talk about arrogant abuses of power; isn’t that what the NCAA has just done? Penn State will justifiably pay humongous civil penalties (my guess is that Paterno’s estate will be sued, too) and guys like Spanier will go to jail via the criminal justice system.

The NCAA has, shall we say, just piled on.

Jack Jakucyk

Whispering Pines