College Football Gets Less Fun, More Rules

Celebrations Banned: Are Cheerleaders Next?

Since intercollegiate athletics are contested between college students, you'd think it would make sense for college students to determine what standards of sportsmanship are appropriate on the field, right? Oh, you are so naive. 

No, it's a bunch of middle-aged men--the NCAA Rules Committee--who are slowly imprinting their anachronistic, unrealistic standards on college football players. Recent rules committee proposals would stiffen the penalty for "taunting," a nebulous concept that the middle-aged men who serve as college referees have proven incapable of assessing fairly. You'll remember how Jake Locker's celebratory toss of a ball after scoring a last-second touchdown against BYU was deemed "taunting," costing the Huskies a chance at overtime.

Now, any behavior deemed taunting-y on the way into the end zone would also be penalized, as a 15-yard personal foul from the spot of the taunt. So the overexcited player who breaks a long run and points at the camera during his last five yards to the end zone? He'll find himself lining up again at the 20. 

Another idiotic repression of utterly harmless behavior: students will be banned from writing messages in their eye black. Players usually will write in their home area code as a shout out to where they're from. Or, in the case of Christian hero Tim Tebow, Bible verses. Pretty harmless stuff, but apparently too much self-expression. And self-expression apparently...is bad?

On the list of organizations that under a Kolloen dictatorship would be exiled to the Yukon, the NCAA is right up there with NAMBLA and NBC. Founded to simply keep college athletics fair; the NCAA has morphed into marketing company, converting the labors of college athletes into massive payouts for universities (and themselves, the NCAA president pulls nearly $1M in salary).

They can spout all they want about the integrity of the game; the real driver behind implementing these rules is to avoid the specter of college kids actually being college kids--taunting, expressing themselves, you know, being young--and possibly scaring away the advertisers that fund those salaries.

The NCAA's end may be coming soon. The organization faces a potentially devastating class-action suit seeking payment for the millions of dollars they make licensing player likenesses after they've graduated. The Obama Administration is considering going after the NCAA's ludicrous college football "championship" system, Congress is likewise pissed.

The NCAA is a pernicious monopoly that long ago overstepped its mission. I don't know what would replace it, but that will be half the fun. Remember fun? Viva la revolución!

(H/T: Every Day Should Be Saturday)