NCAA vs. MLB

For the past few years, I always thought of the NCAA as one of the most ridiculous institutions in all of organized sports. I will offer you a couple examples of why.

1) The Tennessee basketball team was sanctioned for using a "personalized recruiting aid" when a graduate assistant put a small sign in the locker room welcoming the player to the campus. How this is in the same boat as putting the player's name and picture on the scoreboard (which is what the NCAA was targeting among other things) is beyond me?

2) The NCAA halted a push by Georgia football fans to fly an opponent's father home from Iraq to watch his son play. Georgia fans heard about a Boise State player whose father is working in Iraq to help build the Iraqi police force. Fans thought it would be a great gesture to pay for a flight home and make him their guest for the weekend. The NCAA claimed that this was a violation of the rule that does not allow "extra benefits and expenses for student athletes and their families.".

Doesn't the NCAA have better things to do, like investigate the Connecticut basketball players accused of selling laptop computers that were stolen from UConn dorms? They could also be putting their resources into solving the mockery that is the Division I-A football system. Why does EVERY OTHER SPORT have a tournament of some sort, even I-AA football?

Now...the Florida Marlins have joined the ranks of the NCAA for foolishness. The Marlins suspended a batboy for taking a dare from ex-Marlin Brad Penny that he could not drink (and keep down) a gallon of milk in one hour. He did not succeed (I have read that he both threw up and that he did not finish the gallon but kept it down). Maybe that is why he was suspended.

Don't these people have better things to do than deal with these miniscule occurrences??