The NCAA Division I manual is 426 pages thick, which is ridiculous, especially when you consider that it refreshes and expands every year and that every head coach or assistant coach has to pass a test of random questions so that they may go out and recruit.

I’ve been told many times the topic is tricky, but the test is not. I wonder, though, if that’s changing, what with the way the rules are changing now. I mean, suppose you know all there is to know about permissible and impermissible contact during all stages of the recruiting calender. Yet you also think you’re allowed to travel 50 miles off campus to entertain a recruit on an official visit, when in reality the limit is 30 miles.

Or maybe you think it’s 20 and you blow the whistle on rival schools traveling 28 miles — and don’t think schools aren’t lining up to out other schools and sometimes get the rule wrong.

And that’s only part of the problem. It seems the real trouble is that while the book is growing with pace, it’s being outpaced by clever minds that find ways to go around the rules and still stay within the rules.

And, of course, there are people who bust break the rules, some rather brazenly, and either hope they never get caught or attempt to hide behind the size and abiguity of the rulebook.

Seriously, google “bump rule,” or better yet, the “Saban rule,” and feast your rolling eyes on that confusion.

Still, there are so many ways to get in and out of trouble, either innocently or maliciously, that the problem has become not the intent or the application of the legislation, but the actual volume of legislation.

So what’s the solution for the NCAA, which is simultaneously seeking to protect prospective student-athletes by actively discouraging interactions between fans and recruits, but is about to let basketball coaches make unlimited phone calls and send unlimited text messages to recruits that have completed their sophomore years?

Interesting question and, as far as WVU is concerned, a really interesting answer.

“I hope,” said Ryan Dorchester, WVU’s coordinator of recruiting operations, “there’s some deregulation on a lot of stuff.”

If you think Dorchester is some sort of rebel, you’d be right as long as you consider Mark Emmert, the guy who runs the NCAA, to be the leader of the rebellion. He wants to review the NCAA Division I Manual and help it lose a few pounds.

So, yes, in so many ways, the best way to help with governance is to eliminate rules.

“Some of the rules that govern contact – how you can get a hold of a prospect, the phone call limitations, all that stuff – with Facebook and email, communication is virtually seamless now,” Dorchester said.

“But you’ve still got rules that say when a kid can call you but you can’t call them. I just think you need to do away with a lot of it. It’s just unnecessary rules, in my opinion, and makes it harder than it needs to be.”