When somebody would ask me what I thought of last night's football game I always thought that it was a hilarious joke to reply I'm sorry. I cannot discuss that without the express prior written consent of the NFL.

Okay. I still think that is pretty funny, but you know what I don't think is funny? The NCAA is putting limits on live blogging their events. In order to live blog a NCAA sponsored sporting event a person has to be credentialed and now there are limits on how many times a journalist can post during a game.

Seriously. Erin found this story on Techdirt:

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), got things rolling last summer by ejecting a live blogger from a college baseball game. Apparently, the NCAA had decided that this was too close to "rebroadcasting" and ridiculously believing that fans might just watch a liveblog report rather than the actual event on TV. This kicked up some attention -- and you would think that the NCAA would have realized what a dumb policy this was and backed down. Not so.

Instead, the NCAA has now instituted special "live-blogging rules" for anyone credentialed to cover NCAA events. The rules change per sport, but they limit how many times you can blog during the course of a game. For baseball: once per inning (not even once per half-inning!). For basketball, it's five times per half, once during half-time, and twice in overtime. Football is three times per quarter and once at half-time. It even covers the more obscure sports: you can only blog 10 times per day at a swimming match...

I honestly never saw this coming. Are they afraid the ad revenue of my sports blog that gets about 22 hits a day will hurt their ad revenue?

I'm sure it isn't me that they are worried about. I know there are sports blogs online who have insane traffic. But wow. Once per inning? What is the point? Wouldn't you think that live blogging would actually direct more attention to their product?

This is college athletics. These athletes can't even monetarily profit form these games. I understand that someone is making huge money off of these kids, but I just don't see someone sitting home on their laptop reading a live blogged event in lieu of actually going to a game or even watching it on television.

Is it just me or is the NCAA out of line here? And what effect could this have on our other blogging freedoms?

Contributing Editor Sarah also blogs at Sarah and the Goon Squad and Draft Day Suit.