The NCAA keeps disgracing itself with thuggery – and Nocera keeps pounding away!

My plan had been to give the N.C.A.A. a rest this week; there are, after all, other problems in the world. But then, at 6:15 on Saturday evening, the N.C.A.A. announced that it was reinstating Ryan Boatright, the University of Connecticut freshman who had been suspended from the men's basketball team, and whose mother, Tanesha, had been the subject of a horrific investigation that I had previously written about.

Even this bit of good news was double-edged for the Boatrights, however. In handing down its ruling, the N.C.A.A. issued a press release so malicious in its intent that I could not let it pass. Longtime watchers of the N.C.A.A. tell me that they have never seen an athlete and his mother thrown under the bus the way Ryan and Tanesha Boatright were on Saturday. One rarely gets so clear a glimpse of moral bankruptcy. (I've annotated the press release on my blog at http://nocera.blogs.nytimes.com.)

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January 30, 2012