SMQB has an entry from several months back that provides a great starting point in analyzing the NCAA's reasoning behind its policies to protect "amateurism".

In it, he argues one thing: the NCAA rules exist to protect its product---competitive collegiate athletics.

What is meant by "competitive"?  Well, the following:

[F]ans enjoying closer games and more teams with chances at winning more games is obviously good for any sport. The CFB version of the salary cap is scholarship limitations, and also the prohibition against paying players, which prevents the most monied boosters from buying the best teams at the expense of a better overall product

Got that?  The NCAA seeks to create rules and punishments that best drive equity and a level playing field into the finished product.  Its two obvious targets are recruiting and player compensation.

The NCAA's obvious solution has been to regulate recruiting practices.  Teams have limited access to recruits, and are granted limited financial resources to lure them to their programs.

In theory and according to the rules, every program has relatively equal access to a recruit and will spend similar monetary amounts on resources to lure the recruit.  This supposedly shifts the recruit's focus from the attention and freebies (lobster dinners?) thrown his way to the more important qualities of the institution thus eliminating the opportunity for rich programs to literally buy recruits and create a competitive imbalance.

In that same train of thought, the NCAA has also instituted scholarship limitations so that successful teams could no longer stockpile their rosters four deep with All Americans while the competition played with scraps.

This is all well and good, but it doesn't work towards enforcing the vague and idealized notion of "amateurism".

But why is amateurism a virtue? In Objectivist ethics, a "virtue" is an expression of rationality, something which expresses the value of a man's life. For example, "independence" is a virtue, because it recognizes that man must form his own judgments and live by the work of his own mind. In contrast, "amateurism," especially as applied by the NCAA, is not a virtue, because it holds that a man must--as an inflexible ethical principle--reject any form of compensation for his own work

Ahhh, the pretzel.

Look, somewhere along the way several American sports became highly profitable enterprises.  Professional leagues went from pennyless stick and ball barnstorming associations to profitable entertainment machines.  Babe Ruth could be sold to the Yankees and Donald Sterling could choke millions of dollars out of a moribund basketball team.

Further down river, amateur sports also gained economic prestige and emerged as veritable farm leagues that could develop amateur talent.  I am talking about you, D-I football and basketball.  The NCAA basketball tournament makes the NCAA and CBS fabulously rich and the BCS gets to award teams over $10 million for a simple appearance in their bowl games.

The minute the NCAA and its member institutions found ways to gain tremendous profit from college sports, the "amateur" moral high ground was lost.  Its mission could no longer be to protect some amateur ideal, but rather to simply regulate competition among its member institutions.

That is the current reality.

Let's get something straight before I go any further---I do not consider college athletics professional leagues.  The men and women who participate are student-athletes.  They play their games between fellow student-athletes and abide by the NCAA rules (however unfair and ridiculous some of them are).  My issue is with some of the rules that exist.  I take issue with their function, serving less the promotion of competition but rather the outdated ideal of amateurism.

Several situations of late have made me reflect on the frivolous nature of some of the NCAA's rules. 

Recently I introduced Brady Quinn's "agent shopping" conundrum.  Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn has been ahead of the ball in beginning the agent-search process before the start of his senior season.  For that, the NCAA might punish Notre Dame or himself.

Unfortunately, there is an NCAA Bylaw which says he may be ineligible if so much as an agreement was made for future representation between himself and a prospective agent.  Any ruling against Quinn would have been lunacy.  Nowhere is Quinn alleged to have benefited from his access to the agent other than peace of mind in not having to deal with the inevitable agent search process later in the season.

Remember, I've argued above that the NCAA's rules lack any moral or ethical strength.  The only logical and satisfactory mission left for the NCAA is to protect "competition" within its athletic product.  Quinn's actions do not threaten this competition in any way.  He had long ago been recruited to Notre Dame and thanks to the NCAA's strict transfer rules was not a flight threat if he so chose to leave for another program seeking access to agents or other benefits.

In other words the NCAA Bylaw in question is a terrible rule.  The only logic behind it is a bad one---one of pre-emption, striking at even the hint of impropriety that might occur because an agent might be in contact with an athlete.  It targets not competition but one's amateur status.

To this argument, SMQB would likely disagree with me.  In fact, he argues as such in regards to the Reggie Bush housing scandal that erupted in late April.

In Reggie Bush's case, agent access to athletes (or their families or friends) undermines the 'amateur' status of said athletes, which is not important for any esoteric or moralistic purposes - and certainly not just because the NCAA says it is - but for the ongoing success of the sport; the "value" being protected isn't amateurism, but competition, and that is good for football or any other sport where the games, and not the individuals, are the commodities.

This is where SMQB and I disagree.  Bush was in his second and third seasons at USC and was not a threat to transfer to another program.  The benefits extended to him were via contacts not of the athletic department or USC boosters but low-lifes his father had crossed paths with.  Whether Bush had gotten something as small as a free football or as large as a family house matters not because he was already enrolled and locked into his USC education and playing career.  Any such punishment would be towards a violation of a flawed "amateur" notion, not any doctrine about fair and even levels of competition.  The games, the commodity the NCAA is in theory protecting, would be the same quality whether or not Bush's family had gotten the house.

In no way was competition threatened via Quinn's or Bush's actions.  Thanks to other logical and acceptable NCAA rules already on the books, Quinn and Bush were recruited to their respective programs without any violation of NCAA rules or what we shall call the "competition doctrine" advanced by SMQB.

In fact, once they signed with their programs, it would be nearly impossible for them to offer their services anywhere else without steep consequences.  NCAA transfer rules require the loss of a season's eligibility and having to wait a year before being allowed on the field.  Combined with annual recruiting and the possibility for injury and many other unknowns, transferring from one program to another is a rare and arduous process.  The NCAA has put up successful safeguards in that respect, protecting the competitiveness of its product.

Here is yet another example of NCAA rulemaking gone wrong: Drew Tate.

Iowa senior quarterback Drew Tate recently hit a hole-in-one at a charity golf tournament.  That amazing shot netted him a $25,000 check as part of the tournament's awards package to lure competitors and donors.

However, if he had accepted the check it would have been a letter violation of an NCAA amateurism rule.  Thus, Tate returned the check and walked away.  Give me a break.  Tate received no competitive benefit for having hit a miraculous golf shot at a tournament he participated in, yet the NCAA sees fit to hem in on his ability to enjoy the rewards of participation in organized events.

Now, some of you will correctly argue that Tate was there only because he was Iowa's starting quarterback.  This is true, and I will not dispute that.  However, I don't buy the "pandora's box" argument that if Tate was eligible to accept the check, it would create a loophole for boosters to create similar events with easier prizes and rewards to athletes because of their status as star football players.

This is where I think the NCAA is entirely inflexible and afraid of its own shadow.  Any sensible organization would take a look at the facts of the matter and let Tate walk away with his check.  He was punished (not allowed to accept the check and retain amateur status) because of the possibility of abuse later on, on the chance that leniency towards him might open loopholes down the road.

I differ from the absolutists in that I think the NCAA should confront these situations head on.

***
So how do we reform the NCAA?  Good question and I have a few suggestions about where to begin.

1)Throw out the rule book.  Seriously.  Sit down and figure out what the organization's true mission is when it comes to enforcement.  Listen to arguments like presented at SMQB and here about competition and other themes.  Then, rewrite the rules, but write them with an eye not towards rigidity but flexibility.  Oh, and simplify things.  [Edit: Then re-write it.  Sorry, forgot this small but critical part in my zeal to complete this entry].

Many a failed organization (United Nations, European Union, etc.) tripped themselves up in contradictory principles and an ethic towards voluminous rule-writing.  Yet America's founding document had but ten original ammendments outlining the rights granted to the people and their governance.  It wouldn't hurt the NCAA to follow that lead and reduce its paperwork to but a few basic and well-understood principles.

2)Start making rulings and judgments.  Lots of them.  One of the great features of the American legal system is that the judgments build upon themselves.  The courts recognize the intense overlap of laws and the heavy shades of gray involved in any judgment.  Judges look towards previous rulings to make future rulings and when necessary adjust where they find previous judgments made mistakes or set bad precedents.

The NCAA needs to do the same.  Too often there is little established precedent to guide the NCAA in its decisions.  Create that precedent and future judgments become easier to render and easier to understand for potential rule-breakers.  Make it so that there are fewer pandora's boxes by being lenient towards the Drew Tate's of the world and oppresive towards the programs who decide on fancy, barely-earned door prizes for athletes at unimportant hypothetical golf events.  Stop "punishing everyone because of the possible actions of a few" as one commenter noted a few months back.

3)Don't be afraid to make mistakes.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and learning from a few mistakes early on that lead to better future judgments is much better than the current model.

4)Be realistic.  The world will not end tomorrow if Drew Tate accepts a check for hitting a hole-in-one.  He's not the bad guy, nor is Brady Quinn or Dwayne Jarrett or Matt Leinart or Pete Carroll or Charlie Weis.

Overly friendly tutors however, are not a benefit to even levels of competition.  Nor are friendly boosters who create an atmosphere of luxury for star athletes, providing access to automobiles and other perks.  However, schools shouldn't be held responsible for outside parties they cannot police, either.  If a player signs with an agent without a school knowing, they shouldn't have to forfeit games he played in, for example.

5)Focus most intensely on these areas---recruiting, academics, boosters.  Benefits extended to recruits or current players can be an enticement to future recruits that other programs simply cannot offer.  That is unfair and strikes at the competition doctrine.  Student-athletes must hold up to the "student" label.  They need to make grade and not receive unfair assistance from tutors, professors or the athletic department to maintain eligibility.  Boosters must not interfere with the agreed-upon rules that have been established to protect competition.

The bigger picture here is that the NCAA's rules and disciplinary measures are a mess.  They serve no clear purpose and have been written haphazardly over the decades to attack windmills where sometimes there are none.

Am I missing anything?  Feel free to add or subtract.