I spent the weekend in LA living out various self-destructive fantasies. While there, I read Jessie & Steve's post clarifying the scope of WBCA proposal 2004-130, which does not, in fact, prohibit WNBA players from being employed as college coaches.

I also read the WBCA's somewhat pissy letter, which lambasted "erroneous journalism" for failing to notice the "clearly state[d]" clarification that "an institution's coach may participate as a player with a professional women's basketball league or team." I was quite prepared to write some sort of apology for my mistake.

Just one problem -- nothing on the WBCA's website "clearly stated" anything of the sort.

The WBCA committee's website contains two overviews of the proposals: this one in table form (scroll down to page 9), and this one in letter form (scroll down to page 13). Both say the same thing: the proposal would prevent college coaches from being employed "in any capacity" by a WNBA team.

Neither document contains the limiting language. In fact, no document anywhere on their website contains the limiting language, and until recently, nothing even stated that the proposals weren't fully described.

The website now includes a disclaimer, which states in part:

We have simplified the proposals by only providing the intent and rationale for each. However, we strongly encourage visitors to read the text of the proposals in their entirety, which can be found at NCAA.org, in order to fully understand the legislative proposals. The bylaw amendments of each proposal provides the exact details and any exceptions that are not stated in either the proposal’s intent or rationale. For example, the exception in Proposal No. 2004-130 to permit a college coach to also participate as a player with a professional women’s basketball league or team can only be found in the proposal’s bylaws. (Emphasis added.)

That disclaimer was added only recently -- prior to that, a visitor had no way of knowing that some fine print was excluded. The WBCA's site still contains no link to the full proposals, which I found here using Google.

Perhaps if Lori Riley or Mike DiMauro would have called someone at the WBCA and asked the right questions, they would have avoided the error. But you can't fault them very much for relying on the WBCA's website, which according to the WBCA, provides "the most complete, up-to-date and accurate information" on the committee's proposals.

If I or anyone else made a mistake, it's because we read "in any capacity" to mean in any capacity, and we read "complete" to mean complete.

Rather than blaming journalists, the WBCA might think about doing a better job providing information on its website. How hard would it have been to provide the extra sentence in the documents or to provide a link to the full proposals? None of this bears much on the merits of the committee's work, but the WBCA's unnecessarily defensive response to this episode was silly.