[Infowarrior] - The NCAA Took Away My Cat Mug

[Richard Forno]

The NCAA Took Away My Cat Mug

Amid All of the Questions Confronting College Sports, a Mug Gets Confiscated

 By Jason Gay

Updated April 1, 2014 10:28 a.m. ET

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304157204579473352891772622

The following is a true story. It actually happened. It is NOT an April Fools' joke.

This is a story about a cat mug. It is a good-sized cat mug, with room for about 12 ounces of a beverage, and it features 11 illustrations of domestic cats in various poses, including "chase," "sit," "beg," "down" and "fetch." If you do not think that a cat can fetch, you have not been spending enough time with cats. The mug is made by the company Fishs Eddy and it cost me $16.95. You might think that is a lot to spend on cat mug, but then again, it's a pretty awesome cat mug.

On Sunday I was one of the many thousands who attended the NCAA tournament East regional final at Madison Square Garden between Connecticut and Michigan State. College basketball can be a lot of fun, but the NCAA can be a bit of a trip. Like other people in the media, I have been amused for a while at a strictly enforced NCAA policy regarding cups. As in paper cups. The NCAA forbids outside cups at tournament games. It requests that beverages are consumed in official NCAA cups with a logo of a Prominent Hydration Drink. It takes this rule seriously; there are a lot of jokes about the Cup Police, and at the floor-level entrances to the court there are signs in capital letters that remind you of this rule. ONLY NCAA CUPS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT, the sign reads. Next to the sign, there's a stack of NCAA cups with the Prominent Hydration Drink logo, ready for your obedient use.

This is where the cat mug comes in. I'll say it right up front: I was not innocently wandering into the Garden with a cat mug. I felt the NCAA cup rule was pretty funny, and a bit ridiculous, so I wanted to wage a tiny protest against the NCAA by bringing my kitty cat beverage holder to the game. I knew it was against NCAA regulations, and I also knew that my credential to cover the game was based upon my agreeing to adhere to NCAA policy. Rules are rules, and if you're going to go to somebody's game, you have to play by the host's rules.

Still: It was a cat mug. And who doesn't love a cat mug?

The other thing is that we're living in a rebellious moment in which there are a lot of important questions about the way the NCAA does business, and whether or not it is fair to college sports and especially college athletes. No one disputes that college sports have become a big business: The TV contract for the tournament is an astonishing $10.8 billion, coaches make millions, apparel companies pay to outfit teams and title celebrations. Everybody seems to be getting a buck, except the athletes, who sell tickets, drive ratings and move merchandise—but, outside of scholarships, are not allowed to share in the bounty they help generate, and there are a great many rules, some of them as petty as no non-NCAA cups, designed to prevent this. Even charging for your own signature is a no-no (ask Johnny Manziel). To the public, this restrictive environment is looking increasingly silly and outmoded. Just the other day a National Labor Relations Board regional director ruled that Northwestern football players had a right to form a union. Why? Because playing college football is such a full-time job, these players were effectively employees—athletes first, students second. It might not be as serious as a sponsored paper cup, but this seems like a major development.

And this was on my mind as I arrived at MSG with the cat mug. I tweeted out a photo of my mug next to the scary NCAA cup sign. Then I went to my seat, and to make it official, I put a little of the Prominent Hydration Drink in the cat mug. I tweeted another photo of the cat mug at my press table. Foolish? Sure. A dare? You could say that. And then I began watching the game, which, by the way, was a fantastic game, UConn rallying to unseat powerful Michigan State before a delirious home crowd at the Garden.

And the cat mug went unbothered for pretty much the whole game. Until about four minutes left, when action on the court was getting intense, and a member of the tournament's staff came by and inquired about the cup. The staffer made a couple of jokes—I think they were jokes, it was really noisy in the Garden—and I honestly thought he was going to let the whole thing slide (so did my colleague to the left of me, Star-Ledger columnist Steve Politi ). Then I was asked if the Journal intended to cover the Final Four next weekend, and I said that, yes, I believed the Journal intended to cover the Final Four. I still was hanging onto the idea that this whole thing was a joke. Then the cat mug was requested. As in, they wanted the cat mug.

And what I wanted to say was: I refuse to give you this cat mug, because this cat mug is a protest of what I see as the hypocrisy of big-time college athletics in this country, where an urge to reap every possible dollar has undermined a beautiful endeavor. And even if it means spending the rest of my life in NCAA jail, being forced to watch replays of the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl, you will never get my cat mug. And then I would elegantly hop over the table and run onto the court, briefly disrupting the game, while giving courtside cat-mug high-fives to Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery.

But what I actually said was something like: Uh, OK.

And I handed over the mug. I sheepishly poured the remaining sips of the Prominent Hydration Drink into an NCAA cup, and surrendered. Perhaps the  weakest act of civil disobedience ever.

I did get it back. After the game, I was politely allowed to recover and reunite with my cat mug. Eleven cats and I left the Garden, with a parade of jubilant Huskies fans. The mug had dinner with me on the Lower East Side Sunday night and coffee Monday morning. The NCAA remains the NCAA, rich and conflicted, chasing strange infractions, and it's important to state that no cats were harmed in the making of this column. The Final Four is this weekend: Wisconsin, Florida, UConn, Kentucky, the grand finale of a far-reaching, multibillion-dollar NCAA operation. Badgers, Gators, Huskies…and Cats. Your mugs have been warned.

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay at wsj.com

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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.