The NCAA model, ironically, is a model for much of what I currently see out there in the world, including in the Country as a whole. The country passed about 50,000 new laws last year, and the next should bring another 50,000 more. At that rate, there will be a million new laws by 2023. We have substantially more regulators and enforcers than ever before, and, now, with the application of the new health care laws, many more regulators are being hired to ensure the new rules are enforced. How many more lawyers will be needed to figure out those laws? And those folks whose only job it is is "compliance"? That's when you get paid to do nothing more than make sure your company is properly following the rules and regulations and laws that pertain to your industry. Not a lawyer, mind you, a compliance expert.
It's the nature of the beast. The bigger you get, the more rules you pass, the more rule breakers you have, and the more enforcement you will need. Look at the prisons in the U.S.. The U.S. has about 5% of the world's population and about 25% of the world's prisoners. What explains that? More laws for more things and more enforcement and greater sentences.
If you have a stick, and you use the stick to fend off the stray lone wolf, the odds are pretty good the stick will work when you need it to. No moving parts. Easy to check for excessive wear. And so on.
If you have a high tech stunning device with twelve moving parts, batteries, wires, and various safety switches, to which you add a component every year, it eventually will not function as intended.
As systems tend toward the complex, the potential for breakdown increases. A 1970 VW beetle had 3 wires going to the engine compartment, got about 30 miles to the gallon, and could carry 6 people (a kid in the well!) as far as you wanted to go. Carry a 13 mm wrench and you could practically take half the car apart. You could drive 100,000 miles and never have anything go wrong that would take more than 50 bucks and a few hours to fix.
Today's cars are required to have tire pressure monitoring systems. They have multiple computer controls, sensors, input devices, and safety ignition circuits. In many states, if the check engine light is on you don't pass inspection. In many states, if you have any body rot, no matter how minor, you don't pass inspection.
The NCAA has become Byzantine. Major change is imminent. How imminent? Not sure. But the weight of the beast will eventually be the cause of its demise. At some point the discontent will grow, but, unlike the country, secession will not be an impossibility for 20 or 40 or 60 well motivated programs who see their way to more autonomy and, hence, more money, by breaking away (good movie).
And really, who will lament the untimely passing of the NCAA? Probably only the puff-chested bureaucratic bullies who garner otherwise unattainable self-satisfaction at taking out their inadequacies on a great program built from little by a great coach over two and a haaf decades.
