Is there a top-flight athlete left in this country who deserves to be playing their sport?

It seems like, when we can't find out about one, here comes the next one, and it's worse than anything previous.

Yahoo! Sports reports tonight that Oregon State has a serious problem.  Their star pitcher, Luke Heimlich, who is (or at least WAS) supposed to go first-round in the Major League Baseball Entry Draft, is a registered sex offender for sexually molesting a 6 year-old female family member (and again, two years before, when she was FOUR!!!) when he was 15 -- and he was cited for letting his registration lapse!

Oregon State is 52-4, and the #1 team in the country entering Super Regional play, and they play Vanderbilt Friday night.

Three MLB teams have removed him from their boards completely as a result as of the writing of the Yahoo! piece.

The article reports that the NCAA has no national policy regarding eligibility of juveniles who commit felonies, but I wanted to research the possibility that Heimlich's status as a sex offender in the state of Washington would disqualify him at the NCAA level.  It is clear that the relevant parties allowed him to leave the state (as a low-risk "Level 1" offender) to enroll at Oregon State - this is not uncommon in many criminal cases.

Oregon State MUST now withdraw from the NCAA baseball tournament.  Even if the NCAA has no rule prohibiting sex offenders from being actual players (and Heimlich is not the first -- there is a former Air Force football star I'm finding on Internet searches that gained notoriety in this regard), the fact that he failed his obligation to re-register should have rendered him ineligible from that point, disqualifying any games he played in afterward, and disqualifying Oregon State University from the tournament.

I have already contacted the Twitter accounts of both the NCAA (@NCAA) and the official NCAA baseball account (@NCAACWS) effectively demanding immediate investigation.  I am also hoping that some sane person will put some integrity ahead of a national-championship favorite at Oregon State and pull the plug on their season for an ineligible player.

I do not anticipate success.  The problem is, this is not a person who's going to have a campus full of football-rabid animals like Penn State or Baylor to protect him.

I could see ESPN having to report something very ugly if this is not dealt with.