New Orleans coach Monte Towe and his team have been relocated to Texas after Katrina. Towe has accused other programs' representitves of trying to loot his team of athletes. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images
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Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina often bring out a nobility in people and in seemingly impersonal organizations. For a while it appeared even the NCAA -- a famously tangled web of bureaucratic wrongheadedness -- had been overcome by a sudden wave of compassion and common sense.

In the wake of Katrina, the NCAA relaxed several of its rules governing athletic eligibility for students at affected schools on the Gulf Coast, allowing athletes to accept financial benefits from outside sources and -- for students at schools such as Tulane and New Orleans that have been temporarily shut down -- instituting a new rule allowing student-athletes to attend classes at other colleges while competing athletically for their original school.

These are admirable moves, and the NCAA deserves credit for recognizing this is no time to stick to the letter of its laws. But just when it looked like the organization was on a roll, making wise, reasonable decisions, it reverted to its old, maddeningly illogical ways. NCAA president Myles Brand announced that the organization would not waive the rule requiring Division I football, basketball and hockey players to sit out a season if they transfer to another school. That means that no matter what state of disarray some of those programs on the Gulf Coast may be in, their athletes would have to stay put if they want to play this season.

Once again, the NCAA has shown us where its priorities lie -- with the institutions, not with the athletes. Officials at several Gulf Coast schools, including New Orleans basketball coach Monte Towe, complained about represenitives from other institutions contacting their athletes and trying to lure them away. Brand quickly announced that he would not stand for that kind of "athletic looting," as he referred to it, and made sure there would be no bending of the transfer rule.

Even Brand's terminology is telling. "Looting" refers to the stealing of possessions, and that's exactly how the NCAA is treating its athletes -- as commodities. Towe's team, for example, has set up headquarters at the University of Texas-Tyler. The Privateers don't know where they will play their home games this season or when they'll be allowed to return to New Orleans. They don't have uniforms, since they were lost in the flooding. It would be perfectly understandable if an athlete, who has had his life completely uprooted by Katrina, might want a little more stability than that and would relish the thought of enrolling permanently in a new school where his team isn't scrambling to line up a place to play and practice. But as far as the NCAA is concerned, athletes are the property of their original schools and if the athletes are going to take their services elsewhere, they're going to serve a year-long sentence on the sidelines first.

It is understandable for coaches like Towe to fight back against schools trying to damage his program more than Katrina already has, but he's better off with players who choose to stay with the team of their own free will rather than because they didn't want to sit out a year. It's also reasonable for the NCAA to be concerned about other programs trying to take advantage of the Gulf's devastation in order to seduce players into abandoning their original schools (news flash: some recruiters aren't the most ethical folks), but right now, helping athletes get their feet back on the ground, even if it's on another campus, ought to be the biggest priority. "You want to protect the interest of the kids -- not worry so much about the school -- and do what's best for the player," former Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson told the Washington Post. "After what these kids have been through, the NCAA ought to permit them to play anywhere, not punish them and make judgments."

Maybe messages like Thompson's are being heard, because Brand backtracked a bit after his original "athletic looting" comment and said the organization would consider transfer requests from Gulf schools on a case-by-case basis. Apparently the NCAA has ears. Now we'll see if it has a brain, and more importantly, a heart.