Just when you thought the New York Times’ accounts of the NCAA’s inquiry into minor Tennessee recruiting violations couldn’t blow this situation any more out of proportion, their long-time columnist, George Vecsey, decides to take a stab at it:

Hostesses as recruiters: How far is too far?

Holy mountains out of molehills, Batman!

I hardly know how to begin. Let’s just start at the top:

Just when I was getting all soppy about some student-athletes I encountered last week, I read about a recruiting scandal at the University of Tennessee.

“Scandal?” Seriously? Two college girls took a trip to watch some high school boys play ball. It’s apparently going to be a secondary (read: minor) recruiting violation. Most schools have a few of those a year. Ohio State has had more than 300 this decade. Scandal, George? Let’s get real. If it turns out that someone in the Athletic Department at Tennessee asked these girls to go on a recruiting trip, or reimbursed them for the trip, then it could be a major violation. And I would be first in line to call for whoever was responsible to be fired. Even if it was Lane Kiffin. Even if it was Mike Hamilton.

Meanwhile, it has been alleged that former LSU receivers coach DJ McCarthy paid a recruit to sign with LSU. Paying an amateur athlete to attend your school . . . now that’s a serious violation, George. Where’s the onslaught of stories from your paper about the situation in Baton Rouge? Only in the NYT is a couple of girls holding a sign more important than paying a player to sign. And some folks wonder why the NYT is paving the road to Irrelevance.

Maybe you saw the photograph at SI.com, with the two poised young women, with their rigid beauty-queen smiles, posing with a couple of high school prospects a couple of states away.

Somebody get George a map. Tennessee and South Carolina are separated by mountains, not a couple of states.

I’m not suggesting anything untoward happened on the little trip from Knoxville, Tenn., to Duncan, S.C.

Of course you’re not, George.

I’m sure the two young women were there just to wish the lads well and say, “If you’re ever in the neighborhood, y’all come see us, y’heah?”

Oh, goodie. Now we’re to the part where the Yankee reporter makes fun of Southern stereotypes.

It sounds like a major state university encouraging two undergraduates to send an unmistakable message: “These are the kind of honeys we have in Knoxville.” Athletes want to know this before they matriculate.

It’s a good thing the NCAA doesn’t contract George to do its investigations. Tennessee would already be on probation. It’s interesting that local media have thus far been unable to turn up evidence that this major state university encouraged the girls to go to the game, but a columnist sitting “a couple of states away” determined it just by reading a couple of news accounts.

Oh, and about that judging the “honeys” before you matriculate thing. You did catch the point that the two players whose names were on the signs—Miller and Willis—have already verbally committed to play at Tennessee. You did catch that part didn’t you, George? So if the scandalous Athletic Department down here—sorry, down “heah”—wanted to encourage girls to recruit, why wouldn’t they send them to south Florida? We’re hot on the trail of a couple of big-name recruits down there and our guy in charge of that area just accepted a better job at Florida State. We could use all the help we could get down there thehe.

By the way, I am no Tennessee-basher.

Of course you’re not, George. Of course you’re not. Y’all like it down heah, don’t you?

The Web tells me that Interstate 40 is cut off by a rock slide west of Asheville, N.C. (I am not making this up)

George, if you had bothered to research before writing (I know, it’s such a quaint little concept), you would’ve discovered that the I-40 rock slide occurred on Oct. 25. That was a full month after the hostesses attended the game in South Carolina.

Actually don’t know how the hostesses got to the high school football game. Maybe they were flown on a private jet donated by some fat-cat Tennessee Vols booster.

Yeah, maybe they were. And maybe George Vecsey has been paid by one of Tennessee’s rivals to write a hit piece on the Vols. Hey, why not? I have just as much proof as you have.

“My observation is that this is a very organized operation,” Easterwood said. “These girls have obviously been groomed. There’s a lot of eye contact and touching.”

Let’s drag out the Easterwood comments again, accusing a university of an organized effort to turn college girls into sexual deviants who hit on recruits and their fathers. We still haven’t seen mention of the fact that this wouldn’t be the first time Easterwood falsely accused an SEC school of recruiting violations (Arkansas, 2005), and this is apparently the only source the NYT has to corroborate an outrageous claim. But, what the heck. Let’s not let that stop us from a good juicy story.

Could the N.C.A.A. mandate an autumn without the sound of “Rocky Top” echoing off the hills? Could happen. Maybe should happen.

That can’t be right. I gotta reread this again.

Could the N.C.A.A. mandate an autumn without the sound of “Rocky Top” echoing off the hills? Could happen. Maybe should happen.

Oh my. Yeah, he really did say it. He’s suggesting that Tennessee could and should receive the NCAA’s “death penalty” for what is very likely to amount to a secondary recruiting violation. LOL George! A little hyperbolic, aren’t we?