Apparently Pacific-10 Conference officials have little to do these days.
Last month, the Pac-10 placed a ban on excessive access to entertainment in athletic locker rooms. The intent was to disallow privileges granted by athletic departments to athletes that are not available to the general student population.
This ban includes the Xboxes inside Oregon’s revamped football locker room.
This is just one of the many bans placed upon the innovative approaches of Oregon’s Athletics Department. The NCAA no longer allows the Ducks to send comic strips to potential recruits that portray them playing in front of an Autzen crowd. It was an entirely creative and brilliant strategy squashed by the NCAA’s sense-of-humor patrol.
Then the Ducks, maybe a little excessively, shelled out the money to fly 25 recruits to Eugene in a private jet. The NCAA’s Fairness Division hit the brakes soon after it got word of the bill Oregon tallied after just one weekend.
And now, after spending $3.2 million on a state-of-the-art locker room that included Plasma televisions and Xbox video gaming systems, the NCAA is once again putting the cuffs on the Ducks.
Is this one of the most ridiculous things you’ve ever heard?
A full bar, hot tub, and 80-inch projector screen is excessive, but an Xbox? I think you’d be hard pressed to find a student on campus that doesn’t at least have access to a video gaming system.
“That’s a typical response,” Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said of Pac-10 and NCAA officials. “About half the legislation in the last three years has been aimed at things that we’ve done that have been innovative and now are considered an unfair advantage. It’s a little bit overreactive as many of those things are.”
A little overreactive? This is ludicrous. What unfair advantage is Oregon getting out of having a video game system in the locker room?
No recruit is going to commit to Oregon because he can play Halo at halftime.
The bill for the private jets may have been a little excessive, and it appears Oregon has fallen under the watchful eye of the NCAA and the Pac-10 because of it.
Yet, where does the NCAA draw the line to what is excessive entertainment?
What about cable or satellite television? Many students on campus do not have access to that. Let’s not stop there – what about the meals the players get? I’m sure that they are much more nutritious and delightful than what most students consume on Saturday nights. Let’s not even get into travel accommodations for road games.
Shoot – I think I am going to write a formal letter to the NCAA and Pac-10 officials right now.
After all, it’s not like they have anything better to do than pass unnecessary restrictions.

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