SPORTS CENTRAL
-UCLA legend John Wooden passes away (R.I.P.)
-UCLA women's softball wins National Championship
-U$C athletics gets nailed for recruiting violations in Reggie Bush era
-College football looking to expand it's conferences into "super conferences"
-Chicago Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup on overtime goal
-Opening Week of World Cup (yea baby!)
-NBA Finals tied (2-2) between two most storied programs (Lakers vs. Celtics)
-Stephen Strasburg makes his MLB debut...and rips the sh** out of the Pirates
-Oh...and Dick Vitale gets hit in the stomach by a foul ball
That's a lot of marquee news in one week.
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THE U$C DEBACLE
(A quick follow-up - albeit, an admittedly feeble attempt at objectivity):
I will not even attempt to hide my feelings about the U$C Trojans. Suffice to say that I even cringe when I pass the condom section of the grocery store.That being said, I have a few problems with the punishment (2 years postseason ban, 20 scholarships lost, and vacating wins from 2004 season) handed down to the U$C football program by the NCAA for their recruiting violations during the days of Reggie Bush. My beefs:
1) Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll get off without as much as a slap on the wrist. They were the ones who violated the rules. The current U$C program is now being punished for something that the current Trojan players were totally unrelated to (they hadn't even been actively recruited yet!). These players did nothing to deserve a ban from bowl games, and the true perpetrators are getting off unharmed.
*NOTE - My good friend Branden would probably argue here that the current Trojan players DO deserve this punishment. His logic? That they were dumb enough to sign at U$C in the first place. I don't not agree....(read between the lines folks)
2) WTF does vacating wins do? You think Lane Kiffin (new U$C head coach) gives a rats ass about whether or not Bush/Leinart have those wins under their belt? You think Bush or Leinart care? They're off making millions of dollars in the pros. So the 2004 season is meaningless in the already rich football history of U$C. Big effing deal. The real loser of this? Tommy Tuberville and Auburn, who were robbed the chance to play for the national title against Oklahoma, because the (now proven) cheating U$C Trojans stole their spot.
3) The NCAA needs to realize who this 2-year postseason ban affects. Not only are they reprimanding the wrong people, but their sanctions reverberate throughout the college football landscape, including MY job.
Because the Trojans are now ineligible for another postseason (they had a self-imposed postseason ban last year before these allegations were proven true, so they saved themselves another year of no bowl games - one of the few smart moves they made), it affects every bowl game that has a bowl commitment with the Pac-10. The Pac-10 currently has six bowl ties (top six Pac-10 teams go to pre-determined bowls). But now, because of the ban, only nine of the ten teams are able to be picked. The conference usually only has six teams that are bowl-eligible at end of season, and one of those is always U$C. And U$C is ALSO usually top 1-3 teams in the conference. So now, when the Holiday Bowl goes to pick the #3 team from Pac-10, we really drop a slot to #4 because U$C has to be passed over for 2010. And think about the poor Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (formerly the Emerald Bowl) in San Francisco, who gets the #6 pick out of the Pac-10. They are now going to be left without a team, because there will be one less bowl-eligible team to choose, and the bottom Pac-10 teams won't have enough wins to fill that slot. So now they have to go select an at-large team. Can you say Toledo or Louisiana Lafayette?
So, thank you NCAA, for punishing the BOWL SYSTEM for U$C's recruiting idiocy. We didn't deserve it, and thanks to your ill-directed punishment, you're making cities lose potentially tens of thousands of dollars in tourism-generated revenue. Awesome.
4) Now, I will say I like ONE thing the NCAA did (okay, two things...since they DID just extend their middle finger to the entire U$C program - so that's an A+ in my book). After the punishment had been given, the NCAA said all junior and senior U$C players may transfer to another school and NOT sit out a year. For those of you not aware with the system, if you transfer schools, you are ruled ineligible to play for a full year. But because these juniors and seniors had in essence been told they can't play in another bowl game, the NCAA has (subtly) admitted they understand that the player's don't deserve to be punished for actions taking place when they were getting their driver's licenses.
Personally, I can't wait for the absolutely ridiculous panty-raid that's about to take place of the U$C upper-classmen.
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I know I haven't suggested an alternative. And I understand you can't impose NCAA sanctions on Pete Carroll (now in the NFL as Seahawks head coach), or Reggie Bush (New Orleans Saints)...but if you take this long (read: SIX YEARS!) to form and finish an investigation, there's a problem. This needed to come out when it happened. And unfortunately for the university in question - they are left to take the hit with no one to blame but themselves.
They should have policed themselves better. Their Athletic Director Mike Garrett should have nipped it in the proverbial bud. But it's U$C. This is what they do. At least I can sleep at night knowing that the NCAA didn't shy away from bringing out the lumber and smacking U$C's butts with a big-ass 2x4". I just wish it was aimed at someone else's butt - namely, the people who broke the rules.
Another Note: Your friend Branden would say that you missed addressing another group that, while vindicated, got screwed here. The fans. While it is nice to use the Roman's "damnation of the memory" and wipe the record books clean, I know more than a few fans across the country who spent a lot of time and money (not to mention anguish) following games that now never happened. We'll never get any of that back. Imagine if '$C hadn't cheated. Imagine how your days at UCLA would have been different if you had gotten to beat '$C in football. Remember the pain that you suffered instead? Regardless of what happens from here on out, I'll still have many years of memories where I had to endure pompous a-holes telling me how great they were and how much I suck. Nothing changes that. Sure I invest more into this than most and they can't necessarily be held responsible for my irrational emotional attachment. But you want a solution? Make teams responsible financially to produce an honest product. Refund all of the tickets to all of the fans who attended any game where cheating occurred. Do it for '$C and do it for all sports. Fans pay for a product and in most other situations when you don't get what you pay for, you usually get a refund. I'm not saying this will ever happen but it would be one hell of a deterrent. Now if we just knew some lawyers to work on a class-action lawsuit...
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