73 Year Old Deemed Ineligible to Play College Ball

This is a post about the administrative bullshit that can destroy inspiring stories such as that of the 73 year old basketball player Ken Mink. After more than 50 years removed from college, he once again started playing for an NCJAA school only to be deemed ineligible because of an academic miscommunication. Apparently because of a faulty date on one of his classes, a clerical error, the NCJAA has said that Ken Mink is unable to play the game he loves.

How bureaucratic is the NCAA that they are willing to suppress a 73 year old pensioner showing that old age does not mean all you have to do is watch soap operas and talk about the weather? I understand that rules need to apply to everyone, but in terms of a clerical error decisions should not be made so abruptly without considering the circumstances.

Here is a profile done by Outside the Lines. To watch more outside the lines videos check out ESPN360.

This is just another thing that convinces me that the NCAA has to get their shit together. It is just a bureaucratic system that would put the soviet communist party to shame. They have 'meetings' and mathematical formulas to decide which team makes the tournament or which team gets to play in the national championship and yet still manage to screw things up (oklahoma over texas?) so bad that they piss off the president. To their credit, it is hard to decide between teams with similar records and few head to head matchups, but that is no reason to do a shitty job.

Here are just a couple of ideas I have that the NCAA should take a look at:

• Respect the head to head: After records, head to head matchups should be the decider
• the NCAA could generate schedules, in a way where the strengths of schedules have much less variance, thus giving more weight to the win loss records of teams
• Get rid of the bowl system: the reason for the bowl system is a method designed to share the wealth between the major conferences. Now most people are saying to get rid of the bowl system and implement a playoff. This may be difficult without extending the football season or shortening the regular season games. My idea is for there to be a one game playoff. This would mean that 4 teams get a shot at a national championship. You may say that this isn't too different, but lets think about this.

One Game Playoff System:

Set up:

• 4 teams - 2 semifinals
• winners of those games play for national championship

How to choose the 4 teams:

• 9 or 10 toughest conferences are chosen as a sample group
• teams have to have won their respective conference tournaments
• then compare records and strengths of schedules

So lets take last year as an example, the conference winners were:

SEC: Florida

ACC: Virginia Tech

Big Ten: Penn State

Big East: Cincinnati

Big 12: Oklahoma

Conference USA: East Carolina

Mid American: Buffalo

Mountain West: Utah

Pac 10: USC

Now there are quite a bit of conferences that are left out, and this is part of the initial weeding out phase. Then the records and strength of schedule will decide the 4 teams that will participate in the playoffs. These two aspects have to be balanced out, and this is where the mathematical formulas can come in. The one good thing about using mathematics is that they do not see the name on the jersey, just the facts, and at this point it can be used effectively as to void selecting a school like Florida just because of its name. 

The main subjective part will be left to weeding out the less competitive conferences, and this can be done through a vote. 

This way at least 10 teams have a legitimate shot at the national championship, and maybe with this kind of system Utah wouldn't get screwed in the anus.