Jerrell Powe: Smarter than the NCAA

What a blogswarm over the Jerrell Powe situation. It seems that yesterday the NCAA ruled that Powe was ineligible to play football until 2008, but in spite of that fact, he could still attend school at Ole Miss, keep his athletic scholarship and attend classes.

Erik at Deepsouthsports calls the NCAA ruling "bat-shit crazy", and at first glance, I am inclined to agree with him. Either Powe is eligible for an athletic grant-in-aid, or he isn't, and if he is eligible for an athletic scholarship, why in the name of all that is holy can he not play football?

DSS quotes Powe's lawyer as claiming that the NCAA just established a new category of qualifier. He calls it the Jerrell Powe category, but I call it some kind of crazy Solomonic solution that calls the integrity of the NCAA itself into serious question. How can a person qualify for a scholarship, yet be forbidden to play? The very concept itself is illogical, unreasonable, and, well, bat-shit crazy.

Of course, now Powe's lawyers are talking about filing for relief under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and given that the NCAA has contradicted nearly every rule it has and quite possibly the very justification for its existence, it's hard to imagine that the Powe won't prevail either on appeal or in a lawsuit.

Anyway, there is lots of other blog reaction, both positive and negative. Seth at the Hotty Toddy Blog has a quizzical reaction, and defers to Sunday Morning Quarterback, who had this to say:

Such pure humanitarianism is only possible motivating factor for the university, which has obviously admitted a student whose qualifications - the ones entirely invalidated by the NCAA - are woefully inadequate; according to the Association, Powe's coursework verges on non-existent, but he apparently will remain at Ole Miss until he finds a way onto the field, come hell or high water, or, I dunno, bad knees. This is the kind of academic environment Steve Spurrier can appreciate.

SMQ is right -- what motivation can Ole Miss possibly have to give Powe a scholarship of any kind? Based on this NCAA ruling, the very word "scholarship" is an oxymoron if Powe's scholastic work was worthless. To paraphrase Mr. Spock from Star Trek The Original Series, "There is no fact, no extrapolation of fact, or theory ..." which makes sense out of this mess. It is lacking any semblance of reason.

Powe would best be served if he would just give up and spend two years in JUCO, but I suspect that isn't what will happen. By not following anything like their own rules, the NCAA has opened themselves up to a "whadthefxup?" by any number of judges under any number of grounds.

True to form, Loser With Socks' Jai Eugene skewers Powe, Ole Miss, Deepsouthsports, and nearly everybody but the NCAA. Well, I got to give it to him, he makes some resounding arguments against Powe's matriculation to Ole Miss. Looks like to me, though, that even with his 15(!) on the ACT (don't start with the 'cultural bias' crap, I don't want to hear it), he is smarter than the buffoons at the NCAA who handed down this gem of a ruling. Bat-shit crazy, indeed.