My disdain for the NCAA, an organization that systematically exploits athletes for billions of dollars in bureaucratic profits, knows no bounds, so you'll have to forgive me if I sound a little giddy about its latest black eye: Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino crashed his motorcycle while it was carrying—we learned this later—a 25-year-old female member of Arkansas's sports program whom Petrino had hired. Petrino is married, the woman is engaged, et cetera.
↵Bad news all around for the Razorbacks, whose recruiting class is in doubt, and Petrino appears to be suspended indefinitely. But it's just another instance in which the massive, endemic corruption that pulsates behind the NCAA's facade of amateur idealism and what's-good-for-the-kids paternalism has shined through, and my personal hope is that it keeps happening. There's just too much money sloshing around the NCAA trough, out of public view and caught up in the awkward public-private hybrid of state universities with massive budget deficits and enormously expensive coaching staffs, for this sort of thing to be unusual.
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