One of the reasons that D1A Rugby and (separately) USA Rugby are getting tough on teams on eligibility is the Arizona State case.

It's a dicey thing to discuss because a) the Arizona State incident is still in the courts, and b) people don't like to be associated with what happened.

Here's what happened. 

In the spring of 2017, Arizona played Arizona State in a conference game. The teams also played a B-team game, and in that game, a 20-year-old named Christopher Jordan Crawford was put on the field by Arizona State. Crawford was not a student at ASU, and it was not uncommon for some college coaches to sometimes give non-students some B-team playing time. He was also not CIPP'd with USA Rugby, and that, too, was a situation in which fielding a non-CIPP'd player in a non-league game was frowned upon, but also tacitly allowed to happen.

Angry about something, Crawford waited until an Arizona player was tying his shoe, and then viciously kicked the Arizona player in the face. The Arizona player, Douglas Neary, was badly injured and required surgeries. It changed his life and not for the better.

Crawford ran away and tried to hide from the police, before finally giving himself up and pleading guilty to assault. He received one day in jail and three years of probation.

This is still in litigation as part of a civil suit. And the big problem here is that while all of this was horrible, it was made more horrible because a player was not CIPP'd. And it was also made more complicated by the fact that such a thing wasn't policed ... until something terrible happened.

The University of Arizona and their coaches were named in the lawsuit (and were eventually taken off and cleared), even though they had nothing to do with not CIPPing an opposing player. That's how complex and problematic it all is.

So, if a team uses a non-CIPP'd player, it can seem like it's no big deal, and if nothing happens, then it seems like nothing bad came of it. But every time you field a player not registered with USA Rugby, you run the risk of something bad happening, and a lawsuit happening where you're not protected.

That's why everyone gets upset about this. 

Now, USA Rugby is in difficult financial straits, and could undergo massive changes as a result, and we might see college rugby running its own competitions and day-to-day operations. But that is no reason to avoid registering your players. It's not a money grab (and there are things that USA Rugby does that are money grabs); it's how we prevent a coach getting sued out of his house because a non-registered player punched someone.