The NCAA and I aren't BFF; I've made no secret of it. So whenever they do something really dumb, I feel obligated to make sure everyone I know recognizes it. A reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal had his press credentials revoked for live-blogging a regional championship baseball game. Realize what the NCAA is trying to do here: they want to monopolize the decimation of their games, controlling not only television and radio, but internet game casts. So they have a policy prohibiting live internet updates from venues of championship events. That's why they kicked the blogging journalist out.
The paper's attorney explains this situation rather well, "Once a player hits a home run, that's a fact. It's on TV. Everybody sees it. (The NCAA) can't copyright that fact. The blog wasn't a simulcast or a recreation of the game. It was an analysis."
Think about that statement. It's not intellectual property that is being stolen here; it's the reporting of an occurrence. Who else thinks that they can control the reporting of facts?
The real issue here is that the NCAA is oblivious to the changing world around them. The internet affords them an ally to help promote their sports but they just don't get it. While they're worried that they're losing pocket change with people not purchasing their internet gamecasts, they forget that these blogs are actually promoting their product. How much money do those gamecasts really make anyway? It's not like it's Major League baseball, which is struggling itself. It's freakin' regional college baseball. They need all the help they can get. What does this prove?
This is a 1st ammendment issue that the NCAA will lose. Why they choose to continually embarrass themselves like this is beyond me.