NCAA Gets a Bad Rap for Doing Its Job

Enforcement Organization Often Unfairly the Target of Derision

It’s hard to understand why people rail on the NCAA as if it makes all the rules.  Member schools make the rules.  The NCAA’s job is to monitor and enforce those rules.  Yet, when a school is hammered for wrongdoing, it’s usually the NCAA that gets much of the attention and blame.  That’s just not right.

The NCAA, originally known as the  Intercollegiate Athletic Association, has been in existence since 1906.  It’s purpose then, as now, was to level the playing field among participating institutions.  Moreover, it was put in place to fairly govern the rules established by its members.  And, that’s what they do.  But, to listen to people such as former Indiana and Texas Tech men’s basketball coach, Bobby Knight, the NCAA is the Darth Vader of college athletics.  Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

If people, that is, college coaches, the talking heads and the casual sports fan, want to complain about how the NCAA goes about their job of policing and enforcing rules, they should instead turn their attention toward the members themselves.  They are smack dab in the middle of the issues at hand, whatever they may be from day to day.  It is the college presidents, athletic directors and student-athlete committees which examine the individual sports, discuss rules options and set forth proposals to the larger membership body which then votes up or down on passing the organization’s legislation.  The obligation of the NCAA is to work toward educating athletic departments, coaches and student-athletes on those rules and then hold them accountable when the rules are stretched or altogether broken. 

And if that doesn’t work, the schools should disband the NCAA, take on the job of enforcing the rules conference by conference and live with it.  See how that works out.