No need for NCAA to punish Baylor—Scandal, transfers are already crippling the program's future

Even before the principals had all shed their jobs, the calls came. Hours after Baylor's board of regents had announced its intent to fire football coach Art Briles, to demote chancellor Ken Starr and to sanction athletic director Ian McCaw—all are since gone—the tweeters and Facebookers and talk-show callers implored the NCAA to do something so that nothing like this could ever happen again.

This desire ignored the fact that no NCAA punishment will ever keep self-interested people from doing the wrong thing to further their own interests. The NCAA's penalty system is set up in such a way that the guilty rarely face harsh consequences. So the NCAA could have slapped Baylor with sanctions…