Dear Friends, It’s almost basketball season, and while most of your student-athletes are… Dear Friends, It’s almost basketball season, and while most of your student-athletes are getting ready for another exciting year of competition, Pitt forward Mike Cook ‘mdash; or should I say, former Pitt forward Mike Cook, isn’t. In case you forgot, Cook played in only 11 of Pitt’s 37 games last year because of a knee injury in a Dec. 20 game against Duke. Despite the fact that injured players who play fewer than 30 percent of a team’s games can return for another season of eligibility, you denied Cook’s appeal to do so, because six of those 37 games occurred during the playoffs. According to NCAA rules, those six games do not count as six games toward the total. Instead, of course, they count as just one. While I expect nothing less from such a notoriously compassionate and reasonable institution such as yourself, I noticed a few other rules that contradict the logical premise that six playoff games count as one. In accordance, I humbly recommend the following NCAA rule changes be made: Rule Change #1: Hockey teams can have 11 skaters on the ice. Maybe. To the casual fan, it may seem like there are already six skaters out there, but we’ll leave that judgment call up to the professionals. Because six can sometimes count as one, a hockey team can file an appeal to the NCAA to have it review the number of skaters it has in play. If your appeal is approved, you can send five more skaters out there to help your six, ‘er, one already on the ice. Rule Change #2: Lower the SAT score requirement to 137. A high school senior with a 2.5 GPA currently needs at least an 820 [out of 1600] to be eligible to compete in the NCAA. This is totally unnecessary. Because a lot of the games they’ll be playing ‘mdash; or not playing, if they’re Mike Cook ‘mdash; only count as one-sixth of a game, their test score requirements should be lowered to one-sixth, as well. It’s simple math. Rule Change #3: Sometimes touchdowns should be worth one point. Sure, they’re usually worth six points. But sometimes it would just be better if they weren’t. It’s not fair that some teams can score touchdowns while others can’t. So in the spirit of fairness, touchdowns might only count for one point when the NCAA says so. Rule Change #4: Baseball games are shortened to 1.5 innings, but only in the playoffs. Because a playoff game is not as real as a regular season game ‘mdash; one-sixth as real, to be exact ‘mdash; it would just be silly to waste everyone’s time playing a game any longer than one-sixth the regular length. And while you’re at it … Rule Change #5: All postseason tickets are sold for one-sixth the price. While we simple folk might not fully understand the genius behind making six postseason games count as just one regular season game, maybe it would make more sense to us if tickets cost a fraction of the regular season price, too. We’ll take your word for it that a playoff game just isn’t the same, but make the ticket prices reflect that. Maybe you can send a free postseason ticket to Mike Cook, because you certainly won’t let him play his way there. Respectfully, Drew Singer