Numbing pedantry, Part Deux

By now it is the wonder of the age, why the NCAA isn't walking around on stumps.

After all, humans (and human constructs) only have two feet. And the NCAA has emptied the chambers into both multiple times.

Its grand mythology -- and the grand delusions that support it -- are already crumbling like ash between its fingers. And yet its pashas persist in punishing the help for violating rules that become more divorced from reality every day.

You already know about Chase Young, the Ohio State football star who's apparently going to get a four-game sitdown because he was loaned money so he could fly his girlfriend to the Rose Bowl. This is not much different than any other college student getting a loan from a friend or benefactor, but whatever. He's a revenue-generating athlete, so he's not allowed to do what other college students do.

The NCAA decrees this because it doesn't want its "student-athletes" to be treated differently than  other college students.

Keep repeating that sentence. It might eventually make sense.

And then there's James Wiseman, who'd be playing in the NBA right now if not for the NBA's ridiculous you-must-be-19-to-ride-this-ride rule.

Wiseman is a Memphis basketball player who was the No. 1 recruit in the country this year, and if the world were a saner place he wouldn't even be subject to the NCAA's upside-down logic. Instead, for one token year, he's compelled to occupy the giant waiting room that is Division I basketball. As with any NBA-ready baller, he'll enhance the quality of the product by doing so.

So what does the NCAA do?

It tells him he can't play.

It tells him he can't play because his coach, Penny Hardaway, once coached a Memphis high school for whom he wanted Wiseman to play. But Wiseman's family couldn't afford to move, so Hardaway, unbeknownst to Wiseman, kicked in for moving expenses. An admittedly shady deal, but not all that unusual in high school athletics.

Here's why the NCAA got involved: Because, almost ten years before, Hardaway, a Memphis grad, had given money to his alma mater. Which, according to the NCAA, made him a booster. And therefore he was a Memphis booster paying for the kid's moving expenses, not a high school basketball coach paying for the kid's moving expenses.

This constituted an illegal recruiting inducement, in Bizarro World. Even though Hardaway wouldn't become Memphis' basketball coach for two more years.

Wiseman continues to play for Memphis, because a judge issued a restraining order allowing him to do so. And Hardaway, and the school's athletic department, basically told the NCAA to piss off.

This may bring down the wrath of the pashas eventually, or it might not. The important thing is, Wiseman, forced to play college buckets for a year in the first place, gets to play. The NCAA doesn't get to punish him for something he never should have been punished for to begin with.

In some places this might be called justice.

In some places.