Anachronism Central

 You gotta feel for the NCAA sometimes. No, really, you do.

Hoist by its own petard, it twists slowly in the winds of change these days, becoming increasingly irrelevant. The world it made -- a world of capricious rules often capriciously applied -- has all but vanished, blown up by its own hand. If Power Something college athletics have become the Wild West, it's the NCAA who is its most unwitting outlaw, having swung wildly from a plantation sensibility to one of "Aw, hell, just do whatever you want."

It let the genie out of the bottle, and now the NCAA is a Victrola in an MP3 world. Even when it chooses to throw its weight around like the old days, it does so with an almost comic ineptitude.

Case in point: James Madison University.

Which is, if you haven't heard, 10-0 on the football field this fall, and ranked 21st in the nation. The Jemmies (OK, so their real nickname is the Dukes, but I like the university namesake's old nickname better) have rolled over the Sun Belt Conference like the Third Armored Division, would seem to have earned itself a bowl berth. Even if it's only, I don't know, the Del Monte Green Bean Casserole Bowl or something. 

But, nah.

That's because there's a little known codicil in the Faber College charter, er, an NCAA rule that denies bowl eligibility to schools that are transitioning from FCS to FBS. James Madison, Jacksonville State and Tarleton State are all in the first season of that transition.

 The rule, however, says the transition period shall be two years, and two years shall the transition period be. Two shall be the years of the transition period ...

Anyway, so the NCAA said nyet.

Then, to drive home the point, they denied an appeal for a waiver by the three schools.

This seems utterly mindless even for the NCAA, which you'd think could use any bit of sunshine it could scrounge up these days. Being unbeaten, James Madison especially, n, would seem to be an especially bright ray of sunshine. Unbeaten team in its first year of FBS competition! The little engine that did! Real student-athletes making good!

There ought to be bowl games lining up to sell a storyline stuffed with that much romance and feel-good. The NCAA should be lining up to sell it, Anachronism Central that it is.

 But, again ... nah. Who needs romance and feel-good when you've got this here bulletproof rulebook?

Yeesh. And yikes, and ay-yi-yi, besides.