The NBA may be a professional sport whose participants earn millions of dollars a year but two elements of this episode are very relevant to the GAA.

Less than 48 hours after the event, the league had doled out the penalties. And best of all, nobody appealed. Talk radio mavens had gleefully wrung two days out of the subject before the air was taken out of it. Since the NBA employs Stu Jackson, a former head coach of the Knicks, as its full-time czar of discipline, everybody accepts that he has the best interests of the game at heart when acting so swiftly.

In stark contrast, one of the more bizarre facets of the entire SempleGate controversy is that the GAA's idea of a streamlined, speeded-up disciplinary process is one with potentially four different committees involved in every adjudication. The Competitions Control Committee (CCC) sends its original ruling to the Central Hearings Committee (CHC) after which the players can resort to the Central Appeals Committee (CAC). If all else fails, they can ultimately try their luck with the Disputes Resolution Authority. The last institution to place this much faith in committees was the Soviet Union and things didn't end so well there.

There's no good reason why the GAA can't opt for a disciplinary system more in tune with the needs of the modern athlete, something more akin to that operated by the NBA. In an era when teams are training 150 times a year and employing all manner of scientific preparation, it's preposterous that a player's fate may still depend on whether or not the chairman of the relevant committee isn't away on a particular week. That's what happened to Graham Geraghty this week as Jimmy Dunne's absence from the country prevented the CCC from sitting.

It doesn't have to be like this. Imagine if two former players of recent vintage (Jamesie O'Connor, pictured, and Paul Brewster for argument's sake) were appointed as the respective heads of discipline in hurling and football.

Both men could be given small administrative staffs, equipped with the sort of technology to allow them to review the tape of any controversy within hours of it occurring, and invested with absolute authority in disciplinary matters. For 11 successive days, newspapers have (legitimately) ran negative column inches about the rumble in the tunnel. Wouldn't the players, the counties and the association have been better off if the whole controversy had been put to bed within 48 hours?

That's not an impossible timeline either. Let's say a player throws a sly punch on Sunday. On Monday morning, the czar and his staff read the referee's report and pour over any available video evidence. The rest of the day is spent talking - by phone or on video conference - with the principals involved, getting their side of the story. By Tuesday, the czar contacts the player and informs him of his decision.

He then emails/faxes the media with a statement and an explanation of the reasoning behind it.

In a time of telecommunications wonders, that shouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility.

Best of all, the money to finance this initiative could come from the expenses saved by not having to drag officials from the four corners of the island to Croke Park for the various disciplinary committee meetings. The CCC, CHC and CAC could all go the way of the CCCP. Even the Disputes Resolution Authority would be obsolete because inter-county players would be more inclined to take their medicine. Why so?

Well, as a demonstration of how its interest in player welfare extends way beyond the financial, the GPA could get every inter-county hurler and footballer to sign up to a players' charter accepting the discipline czar's decision is final. It could even be a condition of receiving the proposed annual grant. If the money isn't motivation enough to buy into this overhaul, how about this?

Before any Cork or Clare hurler reaches the Disputes Resolution Authority, 30 different members of the GAA will have already heard the case against him. Some of those sitting in judgment are devout hurling aficionados who understand the game, others hail from counties where the sport is treated as an entertaining curiousity.

Equally, charges involving footballers often run the risk of being evaluated by those with no particular affinity for that troubled code.

Appointing former players as czars would mean the end of the faceless men jibe levelled so often at these committees. Even more so since every winter, the czars could spend their time visiting every county panel for a pow-wow with players and management. These encounters would be two-sided conversations in which the czar outlines the penalties being meted out for each offence, illustrated with DVD footage, and where the players get an opportunity to air any greviances they have about referees and rules enforcement.

There is no perfect disciplinary system in any sport but there has to be a better way than the GAA continuing to opt for death by committee.