In today's episode of State Lawmakers and College Sports, the Oklahoma state government has volunteered its courts to do the bidding of the NCAA and its local compliance offices.
Governor Mary Fallin has signed a bill that permits lawsuits against third-parties who "trigger penalties and economic losses" by breaking the rules of a non-governmental governing body.
In other words: if an Oklahoma or Oklahoma State booster gets the Sooners or Cowboys in trouble with the NCAA, the schools can now take the booster to court.
"When I heard about it, it had a chilling effect on me," OU Touchdown Club executive Richard Knapp told The Oklahoman.
This means Oklahoma could have filed suit against Big Red Motors for the 2006 scandal that resulted from no-show jobs given to former Sooners quarterback Rhett Bomar and offensive lineman J.D. Quinn.
However, in a climate that grows more sympathetic to unsalaried college athletes by the day, would a school risk a public backlash for taking one of its own fans to court for committing a crime that isn't actually a crime at all?
"(The bill) doesn't scare me at all because it's a black eye for all of us if someone does something wrong,” OU booster Wallis Marsh told the paper. "So many times, the people that support the university over the course of years and decades, those aren't the people getting them in trouble."