A national championship is certainly not out of the question, but Judge is not complaining that she can't really share in it. She chooses, instead, to praise the skills and attitude of the new goalie and to show up at practice and help her replacement develop, and to jump in the net while the rookie rests.

Janet Judge's outstanding soccer career for the Crimson came to a pathetic close this week. She deserves better.

The NCAA had to rule as it did rather than set a precedent that would damage it in later cases. There are hundreds of colleges out there looking for such loopholes to exploit, and in the case of big-time college basketball and football, the financial stakes have become so enormous that the strict enforcement of such rules seems necessary.

What you can blame the NCAA for is its treatment of Judge's case. The national governing board of college athletics took almost a month to rule on her petition, leaving her dangling without any clue as to her ultimate fate.

If Judge had been a male football or basketball player, the ruling wouldn't have taken so long. You can be sure of that.

The Judge case forces reflection on the role of college athletics. Have things gotten out of control, if we need huge rulebooks that are designed to prevent colleges from cheating on one another?

What room is left for just having fun on the playing field?

And is there no room left in the NCAA for a collegiate soccer player who unwittingly broke a rule so trivial neither her coaches nor administrators knew of it?

I guess the NCAA's idea of fun these days is counting the T.V. dollars from its huge basketball and football contracts.

And I guess that's why they no longer play football in sandboxes.