Matt Stockman/Allsport

Earlier this week, Stacey Osburn of the N.C.A.A. registered three objections to our recent blog post, “The Stupidest N.C.A.A. Rule.” Contrary to the anecdote provided by Matt Traub, a former college tennis player who is now the regional sports editor for the Press and Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y., Osburn said that coaches are indeed allowed to transport players to and from practice. In fact, she says, player transportation to practice has been allowed since 1971.

Her second complaint has to do with Jack Krayson’s story about Jim Valvano, the late basketball coach at North Carolina State, who apparently got in trouble with the N.C.A.A. for paying out of his pocket so that one of his players could fly home for his grandmother’s funeral. “The N.C.A.A. membership has since 2001 allowed schools to provide support, transportation, housing and meals in the event of serious injury, illness or death a family member or teammate,” Osburn wrote. Given that Valvano died in 1993, her objection hardly undercuts Krayson’s point, though I guess it is good to know that it is now legal, under N.C.A.A. rules, to show compassion when a member of a player’s family dies.

Which brings me to her third objection—and quite the can of worms it has turned out to be! According to Osburn, Gardner Cadwalader, the former Olympic rower who told us that N.C.A.A. had banned the grand rowing tradition of betting racing shirts, is flat wrong. On the contrary, Osburn said, when women’s rowing became an N.C.A.A. sport in 1997, the N.C.A.A. had specifically instituted a rule that permitted betting racing shirts, precisely because it has always been such a strong part of rowing tradition. Another source, Bill Zack, the women’s rowing coach at the University of Portland—and an acknowledged expert of college rowing rules—even sent me the actual 1997 bylaw, which was later superseded by another, more general, rule that allowed for “traditional wagers among institutions” that did not specifically mention rowing. So that settles it, right?

Alan Zale for The New York Times

Not exactly. Cadwalader was stunned when I called to tell him that the N.C.A.A. said he was wrong. In addition to being a rower himself, his 29-year old daughter had rowed at Radcliffe, and he had gone to many of her races. No one ever bet their racing shirts, he said; indeed, he claimed that the practice had largely stopped as soon as women’s rowing came under the auspices of the N.C.A.A. He then emailed a top former rower, and a coach. “We were always told we were not allowed to exchange shirts after races with the winners/losers because the N.C.A.A. didn’t allow betting,” responded the former. “It is true, we cannot race for shirts,” responded the coach. “I remember the year the trading (‘betting’) ended on the women’s side. I was a sophomore, and it was right when rowing became an N.C.A.A. sport.”

Completely baffled by now, I decided to make a few more phone calls. I got Liz O’Leary, the Harvard women’s rowing coach, on the line. “Women haven’t ever bet shirts,” she said. “It is really more of a men’s tradition.” She added that there was “probably” an N.C.A.A. rule prohibiting betting shirts because it is a form of betting. “I agree with them. You don’t want betting.”

Next I turned to Will Porter, the women’s rowing coach at Yale. “There is an N.C.A.A. rule that forbids betting on shirts,” he said, “because it is a form of betting.” When I told him that the N.C.A.A. specifically allowed betting on shirts in rowing because it was a long-standing tradition, he was dumbfounded. He pulled out his rule book. “Like everyone else here, we go through the N.C.A.A. rulebook, and nowhere does it allow betting of any sort.” He hung up the phone, unconvinced by what I had told him.

I next spoke to a retired college rower named Cristina Mulcahy, who is now in law school. She had rowed at William Smith College. “My first two years, we bet shirts on almost every race,” she recalled. The first year, the team had done so openly; the second year, more furtively, because they had begun hearing that it violated N.C.A.A. rules. “If we got caught,” she said, “it would be considered betting on our sport.”

By her junior year, betting the shirts had stopped. The school’s athletic director by then had begun giving the rowing team a quiz, which included a question about whether it was okay to bet shirts. “The entire team failed that question,” she said. The athletic director had said that betting shirts was not allowed under N.C.A.A. rules. Even now, Mulcahy told me, it still bothered her that this tradition had been taken away from women’s rowers.

As soon as I got off the phone with Mulcahy, Will Porter called back. “I looked up gambling in the N.C.A.A. rulebook and I did not see that there is an exception for rowing,” he said. “The language is very vague, and doesn’t mention rowing. I stand by my previous statement. I don’t think it is legal.”

Thus it appears that everyone in women’s rowing believes that betting shirts is a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. Except the N.C.A.A. itself.