The news this week came from the University of Oregon, but it could have come from anywhere. Two local outlets, the newspaper The Oregonian and the television station KATU, obtained a report through public records that detailed the interplay between Oregon’s athletic department and N.C.A.A. investigators.

The report provided new details of the investigation into Oregon’s football program. It showed that the entities agreed that at least one major violation occurred from 2008 to 2011. It showed that the university proposed two years of probation and the loss of one scholarship for three seasons. It showed how the summary disposition agreement between Oregon and the N.C.A.A. investigators came to be and probable reasons it was ultimately rejected by the N.C.A.A.’s infractions committee.

Mostly, though, the report again underscored the N.C.A.A.’s unwieldy enforcement process. In this case, Oregon has been under N.C.A.A. scrutiny since as early as March 2011, and a case has not yet reached the Committee on Infractions. Meanwhile, the coach in charge (Chip Kelly in this instance) has bolted (to the Philadelphia Eagles in this instance), while the investigation plods along, the penalties to be levied eventually, against many Oregon coaches and players removed from the era in which the violations are alleged to have taken place.

This is not to absolve Oregon of culpability. Or Southern California. Or Auburn. Or Miami. Or North Carolina. Or any university that came under N.C.A.A. investigation in recent years. This is another example, another prism, with which to view the enforcement process, the bureaucratic tendencies, the system that somehow exists and is being reformed.