What does the NCAA hope to gain from this? All bureaucrats sit around and congratulate themselves on how they’ve used a word processor to change the world. The NCAA is always after one thing: more power.

Consider two other examples in NCAA baseball:

(1) The Official Rules of Baseball is a 4X5″ booklet that’s about a quarter inch thick. It’s worked great for over 100 years. Using Official Rules as a template, the NCAA playing rules are almost 2 inches thick. The NCAA rules are a cumbersome amalgamation which often requires an umpire to make 3 decisions on an enfolding play, rather than a single decision under Official Rules. The NCAA book grossly over-regulates everything from the balk rule to collision plays. Why? Because they have a committee meet every year to make new rules; and the first premise of bureaucracy is that, when committees meet, they have to do SOMETHING. Creating annual rule changes which harm the quality of play are just fine with them, as long as that committee is doing something.

(2) A handful of European players are now finding their way into NCAA baseball. They played in their own countries’ pro leagues. Though the European national leagues are pathetic, many players in those leagues do get paid, so any players who competed in those leagues have lost their amateur status under NCAA rules. With the encouragement of MLB, the NCAA just ignores the illegal players. Hey, it’s their rules, so they can ignore them whenever they want.

It is that hubris which led the NCAA to entangle themselves with Andy Oliver. Having lost to him in court, and knowing they will likely get hauled into court for trying that trick again, what does the NCAA do?

They try to bluff players into exposing themselves by demanding the players answer questions the NCAA very well knows it has no right to ask.

Note to Congressman Waxman: Apparently, three quarters of a million dollars is not a sufficient disincentive to get the NCAA’s attention.