No doubt many of you read Taylor Branch’s expose of the NCAA, The Shame of College Sports.

             Since I know Taylor, I asked him if there was anything that he and I could do in Annapolis to reform how the NCAA rules over intercollegiate athletics. 

             Provide procedural protections for student-athletes who are under investigation, he advised. 

             So I drafted a bill that would give those in the cross hairs of the NCAA the same due process protections they would have if accused of violating the Code of Student Conduct for the University of Maryland System. 

              Today I met with U of M officials.  My assigned reading was NCAA v. Miller, where a federal court struck down a Nevada law requiring that certain procedural protections be provided for a state university student or employee subject to an NCAA hearing. 

              The court held that the law imposed an excessive burden on the NCAA’s enforcement procedures, which violated the Commerce Clause in the Constitution. 

               Since my bill would meet the same fate, I will not introduce it. 

               However, the court did note that member institutions of the NCAA can seek “desired changes in the NCAA bylaws which regulate the investigative and enforcement procedures.” 

               When I was a student at Amherst College, the football coach, Jim Ostendarp, rejected televising one of our games on NBC during a NFL players strike. 

                “We’re in the education business, not the entertainment business,” he declared. 

                  Coach Ostendarp could not say that today about Division I athletics.