Over the past few months, I have used this column to explore the various injustices perpetrated by the N.C.A.A. I have written about the way it terrorizes the parents of athletes it is investigating — athletes, I should note, who are invariably suspended before they are even told the charges against them. I have questioned the N.C.A.A.’s lack of due process and its indifference to the most rudimentary concepts of fairness. I have pointed out that its rules enforcing amateurism discriminate against black athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds.

And I have wondered, more than once, how an organization as powerful as the N.C.A.A. can deprive one group of students — “student-athletes,” as the N.C.A.A. insists on calling them — of rights that every other university student, and for that matter, every other American, assumes are his as a matter of course.

Part of the answer, for sure, is institutional arrogance. But it’s also rooted in court rulings. In a 1988 case, N.C.A.A. vs. Tarkanian (yes, that’s Jerry Tarkanian, the infamous former University of Nevada at Las Vegas coach), the Supreme Court ruled that the N.C.A.A. was not a “state actor.” A state actor is a legal term for any institution that acts as an arm of the government — and is, therefore, subject to constitutional mandates like due process. Since then, the N.C.A.A. has waved the “we’re-not-a-state-actor” flag whenever it’s been sued for violating someone’s rights. Since it’s not a state actor, it argues, its members have no constitutional rights.

Which is why I’ve become intrigued by an obscure court case that is slowly wending its way to trial. Once again, the N.C.A.A. is being sued by a coach, though one not nearly as well-known as Tarkanian. Tim Cohane, the head basketball coach at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was forced to resign in late 1999 after he was alleged to have violated N.C.A.A. rules. (The main violation, usually considered extremely minor, was that he had observed potential recruits play pickup basketball in the university gym.) The school apparently wanted to fire Cohane, even though he had recently gotten a new contract. The easiest way to push him out was to gin up some infractions. The N.C.A.A., it appears, was only too happy to go along.