Once again, NCAA is behind the curve

News is out today that the NCAA -- which regulates virtually everything except when athletics employees can go to the bathroom -- is going to recommend a ban on using text messaging in recruiting.

Congratulations, NCAA: Not only are you about four years too late on this one, you're about to create a rule that is virtually unenforceable. Way to go.

While there are limits on "personal contact" such as phone calls, there are no limits on other kinds of contact, such as snail mail, save for "dead periods" where no contact of any kind is allowed. When it was discovered that text messaging fell under mail in the NCAA guidelines ... well, you can imagine what kind of a field day coaches have had with that one.

The thing is, it takes the NCAA about a year to get anything on the books, and coaches constantly are working to outsmart the system. If I'm a coach, I've already got a MySpace page, a Facebook page, and I've got my own page on YouTube, complete with an open recruiting pitch about the benefits of my university. And while I clearly would never ask my boosters to contact recruits -- that would be against NCAA regulations -- I certainly wouldn't discourage them from being smart enough to use an alias to woo a recruit.

The NCAA hasn't even thought about adressing those things yet.

The bottom line is that the NCAA, once again, is far behind the curve. By the time this text messaging ban is in place, innovative coaches will have found another way to exploit technology to accomplish their goals. It's time to overhaul the NCAA's archaic, 460-page book on regulations, which committees just keep adding to in an effort to stop the bleeding.

The only problem is, by the time the plug one leak, another has sprung.