By Ken Reed
I am increasingly led to believe that the NCAA headquarters building is filled with automatons: robot-like contraptions lacking a brain or a heart.
Here’s the latest example: Football player Brock Hoffman transferred from Coastal Carolina to Virginia Tech in order to be closer to his ailing mom, who is recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor and continues to battle effects like “facial paralysis, hearing loss and impaired eyesight.”
However, the NCAA denied him a medical family hardship waiver to play for Virginia Tech because 1) the Virginia Tech campus is five miles outside the NCAA-imposed 100-mile limit from his home; and 2) because his mom’s condition, in their view, had improved over time.
Hoffman was shocked by the NCAA’s ruling because, in his words, “the medical hardship waiver literally fits my situation.”
The automatons who inhabit cubicles at NCAA headquarters apparently can play doctors and determine when a family member is experiencing a medical hardship and when they aren’t. They also seem to believe the five miles that Virginia Tech is outside of the NCAA’s arbitrarily-selected 100-mile radius from home is excessive and not close enough to Hoffman’s ailing mom for him to provide any aid or comfort.
As such, the NCAA is taking a year of eligibility away from Hoffman for transferring to Virginia Tech.
You can’t make this stuff up. It’s becoming crystal clear that the people that run the NCAA lack both basic decency and common sense.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
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