To the editor:

What to do about corruption in college athletics, specifically football and men’s basketball? The vast amount of money flowing to winning programs naturally provides incentives to break the rules, be they NCAA rules, academic rules or federal law.

But everyone likes money, and the only way to reduce the money in any enterprise is to reduce its importance to people, i.e., its popularity. Which of the parties in interest in college athletics wants to do that?

That leaves reducing cheating. In the 6th century B.C. Lao Tse wrote, “The more laws there are, the greater the number of scoundrels.” And given enough laws, even honest folks are bound to break some of them solely out of ignorance. The NCAA Division 1 rule book currently runs to over 400 pages. Now the NCAA thinks it needs more rules. I beg to differ.

To be optimally effective, rules –and laws — should be both few and fair. The argument against the flat income tax has always been that the tax code must be complex to be fair. Say rather that it would have to be very complex indeed to be perfectly fair, which it will never be, no more than nature is (we can’t all be Michael Jordan). There have always been and there will always be cheaters. Ferret them out and make the punishment hurt. But further complicating both compliance and enforcement is a recipe for failure.