There is a perception - albeit it an unfair one - that junior college athletics are a loosely run business, where rules are merely for other schools to live by and who cares if players are really eligible - they'll be gone in a year or two anyway.

But in reality, after talking to a couple of juco athletic directors recently, you come away with the impression that two-year schools are trying to do things right, just like their bigger brothers at the NCAA level.

That's why it was a bigger deal than it seemed for North Idaho College not to have to forfeit two seasons' worth of men's basketball victories for using a player (7-footer Guy-Marc Michel from Martinique) who was later found to be ineligible, then found to have been eligible, by the National Junior College Athletic Association.

Who cares if NIC had to go back a few years in its records and note that those wins all became losses later, you might think. It's unlikely any of the teams NIC beat during that time planned to go through the trouble of changing those losses to wins on their records. And people will remember the excitement of Melvin Jones heaving in a 75-footer at the buzzer to beat the College of Southern Idaho, not the fact that victory later became a loss (and is now a win again).

Well, NIC cared.

"We would have lost two (Scenic West Athletic Conference) championships, and (coach) Jared (Phay) would have lost 54 wins off his win-loss record," NIC athletic director Al Williams said. "I just didn't want that on his resume, where he'd have to have that tarnished reputation, saying he had NJCAA sanctions against his record. Because if you don't know the whole situation, you would think he's a violator. ... and we don't want to be seen as a violator. And you don't want to have that used against you in recruiting."

Not that that would ever happen, of course.

WHEN MICHEL was ruled ineligible at Indiana, the NJCAA went back and looked into his eligibility while at NIC. It ruled that since Michel, from Martinique, played five games with a professional club team in France in 2007-08, he must have been a professional and thus ineligible at NIC.

NIC was able to successfully argue that Michel, though he played on a pro club team, maintained his amateur status by getting nothing more than basic expenses paid for.

The NJCAA was going by a rule, enacted last August, which said amateurs who played with professionals were determined to be professionals and, therefore, ineligible for NJCAA play. But NIC noted the rule in place when Michel was there said amateurs could play with pros as long as they don’t sign a contract, or have an agent, or get anything more than just basic expenses paid for.

“I said in the appeal ... that all schools were under that same interpretation, that if you maintain your amateur status you could play,” Williams said. “We gave them multiple examples of schools doing the exact same thing, not just in men’s basketball, but women’s basketball and other sports as well. ... If we did mis-apply this rule, they need to go out and sanction other people as well — don’t just single us out. When they realized how big this was (a misinterpretation and misapplication of the rules), they said we’ll use the existing rule from here on out.”

An NJCAA spokesperson said it is NJCAA policy to not comment on its rulings.

UNDER THE current rules, NIC’s two international players on this year’s rosters would have been ineligible. Tugce Canitez (Turkey) and Idris Lasisi (Belgium) both played against pros while in their home countries prior to coming to NIC.

But they were recruited under the old interpretation of the rules, making them eligible. However, in the wake of the Michel ruling, Williams told his coaches to hold Canitez and Lasisi out of a pair of weekend games last month, just as a precaution, until he was sure they wouldn’t later be found to be ineligible.

The current rule has already impacted NIC as well. Williams said the Cardinals signed, then had to release, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard from Australia from his letter of intent for this season because of the current rule saying amateurs can’t play with pros and be eligible to play in the NJCAA.

“Here’s what happens to a lot of these kids,” said Joel Bate, athletic director at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. “FIBA rules require 15 players to be on a bench to start a game. Sometimes their upper-level teams don’t have enough players, so they’ll put some junior players or their second-level players on the bench to start the game. If it turns into a blowout, some coaches may throw those kids in, just to play cleanup, and right there, puts their status at risk.”

Bate said schools do their best to certify their international recruits are eligible, but it’s not that cut and dried.

“It’s hard for us to investigate kids we’re recruiting to find out truly what level they played out, where they played, who they played with, who they played against,” he said. “The chance that a kid could have played a game or two with professionals, that kid may not even know. Seriously, they may not even know that they were playing at that level. I think our idea of what a pro is in America, playing on TV, and some of the (foreign) clubs and stuff, and being compensated, that level is very, very different.”

WILLIAMS IS on the NJCAA men’s basketball committee, and he said a priority is revisiting this rule at the NJCAA meetings in March.

The NCAA rule says an amateur can still play in college, but if they played on a pro team while still overseas, they have to sit two games for every one game they played.

Ideally, the NCAA and NJCAA will end up with the same rule regarding amateurism, and perhaps be able to share a clearinghouse where schools could submit their information on an international athlete, and the clearinghouse would decide if the player was eligible.

As it is now, the NJCAA has no clearinghouse to confirm eligibility. They don’t even investigate unless another member school requests a school be investigated, which was the case with NIC.

Teams do the best they can to determine eligibility, Williams and Bate said, but if the NJCAA comes along later and rules the player was ineligible, well, it’s up to the school to prove the player was eligible — or face the consequences.

That’s kind of scary.

“That’s very scary,” Williams said.

It’s also over — at least the flap over Michel is — and now NIC can go on to recruiting under the current rules — or whatever the rules are once the NJCAA meets again soon.

“We’re glad that this is over with and happy that our image is back intact and our coach’s reputation is back intact,” Williams said, “and they can look upon us favorably like they had before, realizing we’ve done things the right way to get our success.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.