America At Large: As the organisation presiding over competition among US universities, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) oversees the conduct of 31 disciplines, ranging from football and basketball to water polo and riflery, writes George Kimball.

The NCAA also fancies itself as a guardian watchdog, preserving the last bastion of amateurism in an era when the term is all but devoid of meaning, and ensures compliance by employing a small army of inspectors to ferret out infractions both large and small.

Sometimes the transgressions are outrageous. In a probe under way, it has been alleged that in 2005 professional agents provided the University of Southern California's star running back Reggie Bush with a house, a car, airplane tickets, luxury hotel rooms and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.

If upheld, the punishment meted out to USC could be harsh indeed, although it is unlikely to match the "death penalty" the NCAA imposed on Southern Methodist two decades ago. Having established a pattern of corruption whose trail led to the office of the governor of Texas, the NCAA shut down SMU's football programme for two years, which directly precipitated the dissolution of the Southwestern Conference.

But sometimes the investigations are downright ridiculous, as in a recently-disclosed probe of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) alleging "illegal contact" during the Bruins' recruitment of then 18-year-old high school star Kevin Love.

The centrepiece of the probe is a visit paid by Love last year to the home of the Bruins' revered former coach, 97-year-old John Wooden.

As anyone who played for him - or anyone who has ever known him - would tell you, when it comes to moral rectitude John Wooden may be as honourable as any man to have walked the earth. He coached at UCLA from 1948 until 1975, during which his teams won 10 NCAA championships, including seven straight from 1967-1973, and enjoyed perfect, 30-0 seasons four times.

He is generally acknowledged to have been the greatest college coach in history. Since 1977, the trophy presented to the nation's top player has been the John Wooden Award.

The reverence in which he is held by his players is legendary.

Wooden's homespun philosophy earned him more than a few entries in Bartlett's: "You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you" is one of my favourites, and he continually reminded his players to "be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

In short, John Wooden is just the man you'd want to speak to your kid. Even if your name was Stan Love.

I've known Love nearly as long as I've known John Wooden, having covered his NBA career in the early 1970s. A 6ft 9in career back-up with the Bullets, Lakers and Spurs, he was better known as the brother of Mike Love of the Beach Boys, a group in which he performed with his cousins Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson.

Stan Love's post-basketball CV included a stint as a bodyguard for the Beach Boys, which ended when he was charged with beating his first cousin, Charles Manson's former friend Dennis Wilson, for having ostensibly supplied drugs to a by-then thoroughly deranged brother Brian Wilson.

Stan also proved to be the prototypical Basketball Dad. He has boasted that when the other neighbourhood kids were watching Big Bird on Sesame Street, his son was studying Larry Bird videos.

Exactly who initiated the contact between Wooden and Kevin Love, and who ratted them out to the NCAA, remains the subject of some conjecture, but some UCLA people suggest that in the latter instance one need look no further than across town to the rival USC campus.

What we do know is that during Kevin's recruiting visit to UCLA last year, the Loves, pere et fils, visited Wooden at his home, the basketball equivalent of a papal audience.

"They had a nice chat, Wooden teased the Loves' young daughter Emily for being so quiet, and a nice time was had by all," reported the Los Angeles Times' Bill Dwyre, who broke the news of the NCAA probe.

Dwyre also noted that Stan Love told him "Kevin was so impressed when he had a chance to talk to Wooden that he considers him 'the smartest man I've ever met'."

"That," noted Dwyre, "puts Kevin in a group of several million of us who know Wooden."

When someone - "either a fan or an official of . . . another school", Dwyre drily noted - filed a complaint with the NCAA, the organisation felt compelled to initiate an investigation and demanded UCLA explain itself.

Ironically, it appears UCLA might escape on a technicality. As the school pointed out to the NCAA, although he is long retired, Wooden draws a small salary as "consultant" to the university's athletic department, which could make him an official representative.

Kevin Love continues to perform well for the Bruins, but the NCAA has yet to make an official ruling on UCLA's response. Stan Love, in the meantime, is telling people that while the case remains in limbo, Kevin has been advised to have no contact with Wooden, even though it seems evident from here that - if he had to pick and choose - he would be better advised to have no contact with his father.