NCAA regulations out of date

The decision was in response to UCLA's appeal of Rush's jarring 29-game suspension for accepting $6,325 in expenses from a former summer league coach while he was in high school. This was on top of a 15-game suspension imposed on Rush for accepting $200 from an agent, who denies the transaction ever took place.

While the NCAA's move may make the governing body appear benevolent for now, NCAA officials should have been on their knees begging for forgiveness.

The NCAA's mission to root out preferential treatment for student athletes, however noble, is a lost cause. In either case, the association's officials should concede defeat and devise a workable solution. 

In the NCAA's case, this might include allowing student athletes to hold part-time jobs or even to allow limited financial support in addition to scholarship money for those who need it. This might allow for more flexibility in addressing the dilemma of preferential treatment at big-name universities.

Chris Porter, an All-American at Auburn, is no longer playing after accepting $2,500 from an agent so his mother could avoid eviction. If it's a crime to accept money to keep your own mother from being rudely tossed into the streets then the rules need to be rewritten.

St. John's guard Erick Barkley was pulled from a game just prior to its start last week because the NCAA decided that, like Rush, he had received extraneous benefits at a former school. Apparently the NCAA has never heard of due process.

There are at least 6 billion reasons why preferential treatment of student athletes is pervasive and not likely to disappear. That's the amount CBS paid for broadcasting rights for NCAA basketball. 

The pressures and influences that come to bear on a standout athlete suddenly immersed in a realm of power, money and prestige at a big-name university was pretty well dramatized in Spike Lee's 1998 film "He Got Game." Obviously the film's star, NBA All-Star Ray Allen, could relate to the trials his character was undergoing.   

James Naismith is widely credited with inventing the game of basketball but it's been inner city children who have taken the game to a higher level.

Many of the star athletes playing for big bucks on campuses across the country come from broken-down inner city tenements where they've left behind peers ravaged or dead from drugs, poverty and violence. Many of these athletes have probably never seen $200, let alone $2,500. 

They arrive at a suburban campus where their talents are quickly exploited for prestige and notoriety. In a world created by devils, the NCAA expects them to behave like saints.

By suspending student athletes for accepting money or gifts, the NCAA is punishing the victims of an egregious situation. And for every student athlete whose life is derailed by the arcane regulators of collegiate sports, the message becomes clear: keep your unworkable codes and your indiscriminate authority to yourself and just let the kids play ball.

John Putman is a print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.