Get the message, NCAA: Texting isn't a problem

The NCAA management council is spending Monday and Tuesday in Indianapolis trying to determine what to do about text messaging. Meanwhile, the FBI is hunkered down in Washington, D.C., discussing the problem of drivers not completely halting at four-way stops.

That second sentence is a joke.

The first is not, unfortunately.

Roy Williams' grandchildren will probably get more text messages than his recruits. (Getty Images)

But leave it to the NCAA to make a big deal out of an issue that isn't a big deal. In a sport where AAU officials are paid handsomely to speak at the summer camp of a college basketball program before predictably delivering their star prospect to that same college basketball program, the issue of the day is whether a coach should be allowed to type a message into a phone and send it to a recruit.

Seriously.

Never mind the shady practice of agents placing prospects at schools where they know a coach will protect the illegal relationship before returning the prospect in a year. The NCAA wants to crack down on the evil of text messaging because there's no reason to leave well enough alone when you can add another piece of paper to the 460-page Division I manual, right?

Suddenly, I'm reminded of a story Bob Knight told last fall.

"I spoke to the National Press Club in Washington a couple of years ago, and I took the NCAA guide and dropped it on a table, and it sounded like a rocket it was so heavy," Knight said. "And then from beneath the podium, I took out the Constitution of the United States. I think it had four pages, you know.

"And I said, 'I'm a history major and I ought to know this exactly, but I think this has been amended 28 times since 1783, and it's provided millions and millions of people with the best lifestyle that has ever existed in the world.' And I said, 'But this son of a bitch over here has been amended 28 times since noon yesterday, and nobody still has any idea what the hell is in it.'"

Regardless of your feelings toward Knight, you must admit he makes a fine point. There are already too many NCAA rules to keep straight. So the last thing anybody needs is a new one legislating something as harmless as text messaging, which is far from a problem.

At worst, it's a hassle.

Nothing more.

But the NCAA -- thanks to apparently out-of-touch Ivy League schools proposing a ban on text messaging -- will spend two days exploring the issue. In a weekend story, NCAA president Myles Brand and various others detailed to the Associated Press some of the problems that exist.