All together now: Oh. For God's. Sake.
And now the latest from the NCAA, where the bigger picture is never allowed to get in the way of the picayune, the split hair, the tireless pursuit of the silly and inconsequential.
Today this pursuit takes us to the University of Albany, where lacrosse star Tehoka Nanticoke has been a very bad student-athlete. It seems Tehoka was ruled ineligible by the Nominally Concerned (With) Amateurism Association because he tagged a stringing company on an Instagram post that has since been deleted.
Understand, Tehoka didn't say, "Hey, these guys are great," or, "I endorse this company." He merely tagged it.
Nonetheless, this simply wouldn't do. And so the Nominally Concerned Etc., Etc. decided Tehoka's tag constituted promoting the company, and suspended him for Albany's game against Cornell.
Apparently only the coaches, athletic departments and schools for whom student-athletes provide cheap labor are allowed to commit such heinous crimes against amateurism. God forbid if there was even the appearance one of the laborers was profiting the way the coaches, athletic departments and schools are allowed to profit in the (cough) Strictly Amateur (cough) enterprise that is Division I athletics.
The good thing is, Tehoka's coach, Scott Marr, had his back. Boy, did he ever.
“The NCAA makes a lot of money off of athletes and they pretend to be student-athlete friendly,” Marr told a local radio station. “I don’t see any friendliness with suspending a kid indefinitely for making a mistake ... Big-brother monopoly that we work under doesn’t allow you to do those types of things. No warning. No nothing. Just instant. You’re ineligible until proven innocent, I guess.”
Good for you, Coach. And we'll even excuse the obvious self-interest of your rant.
In the meantime, let's all remember the Nominally Concerned Etc. Etc.'s principled stance against commercial promotion the next time you see a Division I student-athlete trot out there wearing the logo of some apparel company on his uniform.
Not to point out glaring contradictions or anything.
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