HAYES: NCAA needs more amateur hours

I've been reading "Are We Winning?" by Deadspin.com's Will Leitch that serves as both a memoir and a collection of his views on the state of baseball. Leitch throws in many stories about his aspiring baseball career as a child to parallel stories about the future of the game of baseball. Leitch's stories follow him from his tee-ball days up until the summer he came back from college to play one last season on his town's Babe Ruth team.

Leitch's memories bring back that dream all of us had when we were young: the dream that we will one day become a professional athlete. We'd have large, lavish homes, exotic, expensive cars and we would win trophy after trophy. Of course, we'd do this with all of the greatest players in the game at the time, who would also happen to be our best friends.

For most of us, this dream faded away in high school as it did for Leitch, who spent most of his high school career either as backup catcher or as first-string scorekeeper. For a lucky few, however, that dream is kept alive in college, the stepping-stone for almost all professional sports.

It's that stepping stone that has caused controversy in recent weeks, as the NCAA has finally realized that student-athlete compliance doesn't mean it's OK to ignore the fact that a university's best basketball player has been taking his buddies on all-expenses paid trips to Aruba. The NCAA is trying to define what it truly means to be an amateur in collegiate athletics.

Incoming NCAA president Mark Emmert decided in the wake of the Reggie Bush recruiting scandal, where the NCAA handed down its toughest sanctions in more than 20 years to University of Southern California, it's time to attack players and agents who attempt to break the rules like Bush and many others before him have done.

In the months leading up to former NCAA President Myles Brand's tragic death last year, the association began a review of how it punished schools and teams for violating sanctions. A decision was made to go hard on schools, as has already been evidenced by the Bush case. USC has been banned from all bowl games for two years, lost 30 athletic scholarships and will be on probation for four years.

"I'm really pleased with how we're working with the universities and colleges to try to correct behaviors that are not in the school's best interests," Emmert told The Associated Press. "Under my leadership, we're not going to see any diminutive effect of that effort. But I like where we're going right now."

Agents have long been a pestering problem surrounding collegiate athletes, offering them those childhood dream-inducing ideas of fame and fortune. And it's the responsibility of colleges, if they wish to hold up the idea that the athlete is there for the academics as well as the athletics, to keep the agents away. If they can't do this, then there is no reason the NCAA shouldn't use some hard penalties to remind them of their obligations.

The agents themselves form another group that needs tough punishments should they choose to break the rules.

The NCAA is taking steps in the right direction here as well. They have created a model state law protecting student-athletes called the Uniform Athlete Agents Act. The UAAA is a law the NCAA is working to get passed in every state that will provide legal ramifications against agents should they make contact with a student-athlete.

In addition, the association is working with the various league and players associations to have professional sanctions put on agents who violate the rules.

The biggest question remaining is "Do fans care?" I asked my roommate, Josh, for some perspective on the Bush case. Josh grew up in California, played football and is a USC fan. He's mad about the fact that the school is being punished harshly while Bush himself is only losing titles and some of his reputation.

"It would be nice if there were some way he could be punished in the NFL for this, but there's no way that could happen," Josh said. He also points out that USC has a particularly high number of National Merit Scholars, adding, "You think they would be smarter than this."

For Bush, at least, the childhood dream of fame and fortune continues unabated. As my friend Will said during our discussion on USC's defamed anti-hero, "[Bush] got all he wanted from Kim Kardashian, plus the money, a Super Bowl ring and an even better girlfriend now. He's had a great year."