UofK minor violation and article

Eric Crawford-via-The Courier-Journal said:

Just a minute. I feel a John Prine song coming on.

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Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County, down by the Green River where Paradise lay. Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking, the NCAA rule book has yanked it away.
And now, the latest NCAA news.
Muhlenberg County coach Reggie Warford included University of Kentucky player Darius Miller's picture on a flyer and in an advertisement for his basketball camp.
And that, of course, violates NCAA commandment No.1: No one shall profit from the student athletes (except for the NCAA, its member schools, rights-paying broadcast partners and corporate sponsors).
Miller didn't know his picture was being used. UK didn't know, either. Yet Miller might have to sit out a game because of this secondary violation, which UK dutifully reported.
That, by the way, would be one more game than O.J. Mayo ever had to sit, for those scoring at home.
The most famous case along these lines involved Indiana's Steve Alford, who got a one-game suspension for posing for a sorority charity calendar — an episode immortalized in John Feinstein's book "A Season on the Brink." But in that case, at least Alford had knowledge of what was going on, even if he didn't know the NCAA rule.
No, as an NCAA athlete, even if there's a charity you work for and want to support, you're banned from giving away or signing an item to be auctioned off for a fundraiser. Coaches can provide items, but players can not.
I appreciate the spirit of these rules. They're supposed to protect players from being exploited commercially. They're also to protect them from those who would threaten their amateur status.
But they're also, in 2009, the height of hypocrisy from an organization that has turned its athletes into walking billboards and its tournaments into a series of TV timeouts with a little sports action wedged in.
What these rules really protect are the NCAA's brand. This is an organization that wouldn't let people sitting courtside for NCAA Tournament games go to their seats unless their drinks were in special "Vitamin Water" cups. And players weren't even allowed to drink Gatorade this year, because the NCAA was getting sponsorship money from a corporate competitor.
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One University of Louisville player even tried to get a reporter to smuggle in a Sprite, such was his dislike for Vitamin Water. He never got it. That would've been a violation.

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Change will not come until players decide they've had enough. The schools will not stand up for them. The schools are the NCAA, and if a player doesn't believe that, let him try to sue the NCAA and see which side of the courtroom aisle the school lawyers sit on.
But players have little chance to fight for themselves. Their college careers are short, and the NCAA's legal pockets are deep.
The NCAA can make any rule it wants, and so long as it follows its own procedures, it can enforce those rules however it wants without government interference, just like a church, country club or any other private organization.
The only way change can come in the NCAA is from the inside, from its members, from schools, in fact, who have a vested interest in keeping the NCAA powerful, even if it slaps their wrists from time to time.
No wonder it feels above the law. There may be nowhere in this country where the punishments are more out of whack with the crimes than in the NCAA.

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