My plan had been to give the N.C.A.A. a rest this week; there are, after all, other problems in the world. But then, at 6:15 on Saturday evening, the N.C.A.A. announced that it was reinstating Ryan Boatright, the University of Connecticut freshman who had been suspended from the men’s basketball team, and whose mother, Tanesha, had been the subject of a horrific investigation that I had previously written about.

Even this bit of good news was double-edged for the Boatrights, however. In handing down its ruling, the N.C.A.A. issued a press release so malicious in its intent that I could not let it pass. Longtime watchers of the N.C.A.A. tell me that they have never seen an athlete and his mother thrown under the bus the way Ryan and Tanesha Boatright were on Saturday. One rarely gets so clear a glimpse of moral bankruptcy. (I’ve annotated the press release on my blog at http://nocera.blogs.nytimes.com.)

In essence, the release says that Ryan and Tanesha received $8,000 in “impermissible benefits” from two people it describes as having “improper third-party influence over student-athletes and their families.” That sounds bad, doesn’t it?

But what exactly constitutes “improper third-party influence?” When I put this question to Stacey Osburn, the author of the N.C.A.A. press release, she said it means someone who takes advantage of an athlete “for personal gain.” One example would be a “third party” paying off an athlete’s family to help steer him to a particular school. Another would be fronting for a sports agent, who hopes to eventually land the player as his client. (Agents are forbidden under the N.C.A.A.’s definition of amateurism.)