Time for my semi-annual NCAA gripe session

Oh NCAA, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Is it the way you continually stick your nose in business that isn't yours?

2. Is it the way you keep a double standard when issuing NCAA sanctions and punishments?

3. Is it the way you continue to re-dress the same old pile of crap known as the BCS, and try to feed it to us as a supposed "national championship" game?

I could go on for hours on how the NCAA is hurting collegiate athletics more than it is helping them. But these three specific problems have pushed me over the edge.

They set the rules and everybody else must follow them.

Never mind whether or not the rules make any sense.

Take for example the recent ruling by the NCAA to ban "displaying hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery at any of the 88 NCAA championships."

In other words, if you have a Native American mascot, such as the Seminoles, Fighting Illini, Utes, Indians and Fighting Sioux, you are prohibited from participating in NCAA-sanctioned events. According to this ruling, the NCAA tournaments would be off limits to teams like Florida State, Illinois, Utah, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Monroe and North Dakota (to name a few), unless those schools changed their mascots.

Once again the NCAA is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong. Where does the NCAA get off telling schools how to name their mascots? Bobby Knight recently called the NCAA a monopoly, this ruling shows it to be true.

Florida State, a definite "big fish" in the NCAA pond when it comes to athletics, fought the ruling, saying they have permission from the Seminole tribe to use the nickname and the NCAA relented. But where does that leave the other schools?

To show you how ridiculous the ruling is, if they truly use it correctly the NCAA cannot have the word Illinois in their tournaments. Why not? Because Illinois is algonquin for "tribe of superior men," so any team with Illinois on their jersey can't participate. Indiana means "land of Indians" so that must be offensive too. How about Arkansas? It comes from the Quapaw Indians and we have no clue if they've given the Razorbacks permission to use it. Better yet, what about Delaware? It is no different than Seminole, being that it is the name of a tribe. Same with Massachusetts, Dakota and Missouri.

Why don't we ban all animal mascots also? According to PETA animals have feelings too. Do Tigers like being seen as a hostile animal? I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings.

The term "hostile" in the ruling is what gets me. Weren't mascots designed with hostility in mind? The idea of competition is for one team to win and one team to lose. You can't compete without showing at least a little hostility toward your opponent. As long as the hostility is taken in light of gamesmanship, is there any problem?

Along the lines of the NCAA not minding its own business, they also limited the size of media guides to only 208 pages. Is this really something the NCAA needs to be worried about? Last season Missouri's football media guide was 614 pages. Granted it was way bigger than it needed to be. It was so big that I used it in place of blocks to hoist up my car while changing the oil. But if the Missouri Sports Information Department wants to put together something rivaling "War and Peace," who am I to question it? I'll bet there are some Mizzou students who were gaining valuable experience working on the media guide last season. Sounds like a problem for the NCAA to solve. The next step is for the NCAA to start creating curriculum for its member schools. They can justify it by saying "Our member schools need to have exemplary academic standards. To this end athletes must take Fascism 101, 201 and 301 to understand the fist with which we rule. These classes must be taken just to remain eligible for NCAA-sanctioned athletic events."

Changing the subject but sticking with the NCAA, did you see these soft "sanctions" handed down to the University of South Carolina?

The school admitted to 10 violations that occurred under Lou Holtz's tenure, six of which are considered major. So what does the NCAA do? They slap them on the wrist, merely giving them three years of probation with a few scholarships lost and a few recruiting visits not allowed. No loss of television revenue, no ban from postseason play. What a hypocritical organization.

Had New Mexico State, Pittsburg State or a lesser-known school that didn't play in the SEC and didn't have Steve Spurrier as their current coach were caught with six major violations, they would have been barred from postseason play for two years and had their one or two television games canceled.

So much for looking out for the best interests of intercollegiate athletics as a whole.

Another great move by the NCAA is the new poll they have come up with to take the place of the Associated Press poll when deciding who gets to play in the BCS title game. The old system was broken, so lets replace one cog with a nearly identical cog and hope nobody will notice.

It still does not change the fact that seven schools could be undefeated at the end of the season and only two would get to play in the national championship game.

Don't think a tournament-style playoff will work? Look at the NCAA basketball tournament. It's the single biggest money-maker in the NCAA. If you took the top 16 teams and played them in a playoff, that would create 15 games. Take each of the individual games and play them at the 15 biggest stadiums in the country and don't tell me you couldn't make more money than at the Emerald Bowl and the FurnitureGallery.com Bowl. And don't try telling me that it isn't about the money because nobody is buying that argument.

Even if it weren't about the money, it cetainly isn't about common sense.