NCAA provides food for thought

The NCAA is against common sense.

This was one aspect of the NCAA case against the Maryland football program, at least as it concerned two sodas and a hot dog, a birthday cake, and a T-shirt and a cap.

In the NCAA section on etiquette, a coach is not permitted to pick up the cost of two sodas and a hot dog if the recipient of the gesture is a recruit.

So now Maryland finds itself on both the fast track and laugh track of college football after being sentenced to one year of probation from the NCAA.

The NCAA is unyielding on this.

Coaches are not permitted to quench the thirst of a prospective minor leaguer.

“Not even a Coke,” athletic director Debbie Yow says.

The NCAA has been inspecting the soda cans and food crumbs at Utah and Maryland this summer, which has been no easy task, considering the larger-than-life figures of Rick Majerus and Ralph Friedgen.

Neither man is inclined to miss a meal, and that spirit runs deep within their respective programs.

Majerus bumped up against the infractions committee of the NCAA because of his mealtime habits with players.

The NCAA found a hamburger to be an incredibly persuasive recruiting tool.

Or as Majerus put it, “Hey, if I only become a Ute, I’ll be able to go to Crown Burger with Majerus.”

Eating is a growth industry in America, no Utes, Terps or chicken-wing bones about it.

Asked why he came to America, the immigrant said, “even your poor people are fat.”

The potential buying of stomachs is a uniquely NCAA interest, which is too bad.

It shows the NCAA is out to lunch, as usual. Even bureaucrats have to eat.

The morally bankrupt system would be better served if it functioned in the real world, as opposed to functioning in the world of parody. The NCAA might even be taken seriously on occasion if it did not try to police all aspects of the human condition.

What if a recruit has bad breath?

It seems a coach has two choices: tolerate the bad breath to stay in compliance with the NCAA or buy the recruit a bottle of mouthwash and hope the infraction is never uncovered.

There is the element of the unknown with the onerous encyclopedia set of NCAA rules.

Even the coaches who must adhere to all the rules hardly know a good portion of them.

This justifies the existence of a compliance officer in the athletic department.

It is the job of a compliance officer to have an obsessive-compulsive disorder with the NCAA rules. A competent compliance officer goes on moonlit walks with the NCAA tome in order to build a loving relationship with it.

When a coach goes to a compliance officer with an important query, it is the role of the compliance officer to know the answer right away.

How many trips to the rest room is a recruit permitted to take while he is on campus?

A coach is not apt to know the answer. But a compliance officer who has built a tender partnership with the NCAA tome is able to give a swift response.

Alas, the Big Brother-like NCAA has created a well-documented maze of liberty-destroying mechanisms, in which the principals labor amid the assumption that anything other than breathing is subject to official approval. This is bad business, plus un-American. The absence of clarity makes outlaws of them all and leads to a startling moral relativism.

In the latest head-shaking installment, Baylor is burning, and the NCAA is fiddling with hot dogs, hamburgers and soda pop.

The NCAA, not unlike any other bloated bureaucracy, is incapable of reforming itself. Bureaucracies, by their very nature, have an incredible sense of self-preservation.

Instead of acknowledging the professionalism of Division I football and basketball, and working from there, the NCAA embraces a petty system that encourages contempt. We should not be surprised by those coaches who go off the deep end.

That is not the case at all with Majerus and Friedgen.

The NCAA was obligated to respond to a couple of funny dollars here and there at Maryland, mustard and ketchup stains and a highly irregular birthday cake.

One element of the investigation remains unclear, namely whether the Maryland assistant sang happy birthday to the recruit. If so, was it a violation of an NCAA rule?

We know the rest.

No cake. No candles. No ice cream. No soda pop. No balloons. No paper hats. No noisemakers. No clown to perform magic tricks.

A clown would be redundant anyway with so many NCAA clowns in the mix.