Remember the 2008 NCAA basketball national title game between Memphis and Kansas? The overtime thriller made possible by the Jayhawks’ never-say-die tenacity, the Tigers’ poor free-throw shooting down the stretch, and Mario Chalmers’ amazing shining moment at the end of regulation?
You know… the shot they’ll be talking about in Kansas for, well, as long as there’s a Kansas?
You don’t remember it? Yeah, me neither. How could we? After all, according to the NCAA, it never happened.
The Final Four in ’08 was, for the ninth time in NCAA history, actually a Final Three.* Kansas had a bye in the championship game. That Chalmers shot was purely a figment of your imagination. Rock, Chalk, Forfeit!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate this particular penalty. I find it Orwellian and absurd. Yes, it’s terrible that Derrick Rose cheated. And yes, I understand there have to be consequences. And yes, I recognize that stiff forward-looking penalties in some ways seem even less fair, given that the current coaches and players aren’t responsible for what happened in the past. And no, I’m not sure what the solution to this dilemma is. But I’m convinced the solution isn’t to pretend that historical events didn’t happen.
You can’t just flush the past down the memory hole. Memphis did play in the Final Four in 2008, and as it happened, they took part in one of the most thrilling title games ever. By all means, put an ugly asterisk next to their appearance in the record books. But don’t just erase their season. It happened. You can’t ask me to pretend it didn’t. Retroactive forfeits are lame, lame, lame.
It would be like altering the record books to indicate that Barry Bonds didn’t hit 762 career home runs, and 73 in a season. He did. Did he cheat? Yes. Should he be excluded from the Hall of Fame because he cheated? Maybe. Should there be an asterisk next to his records? Absolutely. But don’t tell me the records never happened, or that he didn’t hit those home runs. They did, and he did. Those are just historical facts. And erasing inconvenient historical facts, whether as a “penalty” or for whatever other reason, is, well, doubleplusungood.
On another note, how must Kentucky fans be feeling right now? Congratulations, you just hired the first coach ever to have two Final Four appearances, with two separate teams, vacated due to major scandals! What are you going to do now? (“We’re going to Disney World! But then our trip will be wiped from the record books.”)
*Once, in 1971, it was a Final Two!
P.S. Actually, the Chalmers shot is, in a certain way, even more significant now that the Jayhawks’ opponent has been flushed down the memory hole. That shot prevented college basketball from having its first-ever season without a champion. Although there have been eleven vacated Final Four appearances — resulting, as just noted, in nine “Final Threes” and a “Final Two,” according to the record books — including several vacated title-game appearances by national runner-ups (Memphis being the latest), there has never been a national champion who has been forced to retroactively vacate its tournament wins. If Chalmers shot hadn’t fallen, Memphis would have been the first.
Hmm, how about we put it this way, remember the year Floyd Landis won the Tour de France?
The question there is, does he keep his tour title even though he cheated? (Although using steroids in the middle of a stage race never has made sense to me, and always made me thing something at least moderately fishy is going on here, or Landis is really really dumb. For a mid race test you expect autologous, or homologous blood doping or EPO, or something like that, which is a separate kind of doping entirely. I suppose steroids might have been injected to alleviate the inflammation and severe cramps he had experienced the day before. Still steroids build muscle mass not necessarily efficiency making them a poor choice for a cyclist trying to improve performance. Anyway, not the point.)
By Brendan’s argument we should leave him at the top of the podium and just add an asterisk next to his name. But that’s the thing, he didn’t win he cheated. Bonds didn’t “win” he cheated. You don’t get to keep a record if you cheated to get it. I don’t think anyone wants to start keeping the record book of this is what they would be if we didn’t throw the cheats out. So Bond’s cheated, no cookie and no place in the record books. A place in history, sure, but not place in the record books. Likewise the basketball games you mention, a place in history. Okay. But in terms of official season result? Nope, they are gone, they didn’t win, they cheated.
Likewise if the NCAA investigation had actually found that USC was culpable for whatever it is Reggie Bush supposedly did that was outside NCAA guidelines, then the rules of the game apply. It doesn’t change history, but the rules of the game apply. It is after all, a game. And the official results of the game are, well, the official results of the game. It doesn’t change the history of what actually happened. But games are not life and they are governed by their own rules.
I would argue that a race is slightly different, because although I’m sure there is a lot of strategy that goes into it, at the end of the day, it’s a bunch of people trying to be a fast as possible, and if the fastest person is removed from the race, you can plausibly say the runner-up is the new winner. Sort of like the Miss America pageant or something.
But you can’t do that in a 64-team tournament. The bracket makes no sense when you start erasing teams’ victories. How must Texas feel about the idea that they lost in the Elite Eight to a nonentity, or North Carolina in the Final Four? For that matter, how much Texas-Arlington feel? Should we declare them the first #16 seed ever to beat a #1 in the men’s tourney? I know, I know, the NCAA says these are “loss-loss” forfeits — both teams get an “L.” But WTF? That doesn’t make any God damn sense. Every game has a winner. There are 63 games in the NCAA Tournament, and 63 winners. Not 58.
Also, the “cheating” in the Tour de France context is a bit more direct — you’re actively taking chemicals to literally change your performance on the day of the race. As opposed to cheating a year earlier on your academic eligibility. They’re both cheating, but the former type of cheating affects the competitive balance in a more direct, immediate way. The latter feels a bit more esoteric, somehow. With academic cheating, the bigger issue is how to deter it in the future. Or so it seems to me.
I think the difference between individual and team competition also matters. When you have individuals basically competing in a pure test of physical prowess, I can see more the rationale for retroactive penalties if someone is discovered to have enhanced that prowess. Team competition involves so many more variables, and vacating wins affects so many more people.
Nevertheless, you make a good point, and I understand it, and yet I still hate the NCAA’s solution.
Oddly, if Memphis had won the national championship, and they wanted to take away their trophy, I’d be more okay with that — like someone’s Olympic gold medal being taken away, but their name being left in the record books showing how the competition went down, albeit with an asterisk next to it. Likewise, I think I’m OK with the NCAA saying “Memphis, take down the Final Four banner in your gym.” Also, telling them to forfeit any direct financial gains, maybe even some indirect ones to the extent those can be quantified, that flowed from the Final Four appearance, is totally fine with me. Where I draw the line is altering the record books to erase their appearance. I just viscerally hate that idea.
Though in all fairness to Memphis, the punishment does not seem to quite fit the crime in this case. Had the NCAA shown that Memphis encouraged or assisted in cheating on the SAT that would be one thing. But I’m not sure you can really hold Memphis as a team and university responsible for ETS’s decision to invalidate an SAT result after the basketball season had already concluded, had ETS decided to invalidate the score during the season and Memphis continued to allow him to play that would be a different question entirely. That is to say, strict liability (the same thing the IOC uses for doping offices) doesn’t really seem to make a whole heck of a lot of sense here.
The point is, severe punishments (actions have consequences words have meanings) should follow severe infractions. And should obviate official results where appropriate. So the argument in this case should not be we need to ignore the rules of the game. The argument is on whether or no the punishment fits the crime. In this case I would have to argue it fairly clearly does not. But then the NCAA has no teeth to punish the player directly so they’ll just flail about at anything they can get their hands on. Which is rather stupid.
There’s one more issue, and it’s one I hate to bring up, but in this context I think it matters. Don’t we all suspect that this sort of cheating happens quite frequently without being caught? Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s no reason not to catch as many teams as you can — just like the inability to catch every murderer is no reason to stop prosecuting murder altogether. But when you start talking about retroactively altering the record books, I think the inherent selectivity of NCAA rules enforcement (due to the limitations of its enforcement apparatus) becomes a problem. Do we really think Memphis was the only team in the 2008 tournament that had an ineligible player? I’m not as cynical as some, but even I find that hard to believe. And yet they’re the only ones who get retroactively erased from the bracket. Somehow, that feels like more of a problem in the context of retroactive alteration of historical tournament records than it does in the context of, say, financial penalties or scholarship limitations or whatever.
“the NCAA has no teeth to punish the player directly so they’ll just flail about at anything they can get their hands on. Which is rather stupid.”
Indeed. This is also an excellent and important point.
Hmm, there was a bit of a calculated risk brining up cycling by way of analogy. At the lower amateur levels, especially cat 5 and pretty much cat 4 also you aren’t too far off in your characterization. But by the time you get to cat 3 and especially by the time you get to riding a pro grand tour cycling is a rather insanely complicated team sport. It would be more as if you tried to play the entire NCAA tournament on one court at the same time over the course of 21 days with a different winner each day, but also an overall winner. And also winners in a few other categories that are, strategically, completely different form the overall category. And try to follow what is going on. Also everyone would play the whole time and there would be no time outs.
For example, in this years tour Alberto Contador won the general classification. Andy Schleck and Lance Armstrong came in second and third. But had Contador not been in the race at all, Lance probably would have one not Andly Schleck. How does that work out? Well Lance and Alberto were on the same team. Had they been on different teams (like they will be next year) things also would have been a lot more interesting. But what that meant for Lance this year was he marked the wheels of other riders that were a threat to Contador when Contador attacked because Contador was the strongest rider on the team. Once Contador is up the road there is no reason for Lance to attack his teammate, especially when doing so would help other riders that are a threat to Contador regain contact with him and avoid loosing time. Instead Lance marks their wheels and counter attacks them in an effort to weaken and slow them further allowing Contador to gain even more time. Which means, ultimately, Lance came in a few seconds behind Andy. But if Lance was free to fly it is unlikely that Andy would have finished ahead of him. And that’s the simplified version. And just one category. If you go out and try and win a grand tour on brute force alone you’ll loose, in fact you probably wont even finish.
Next years tour will likely be extremely interesting, it will likely match Alberto and Lance head to head. But Lance is likely to have the much much stronger team, in all likely hood the strongest team in the race. That means more guys to mark wheels, defend attacks and fetch him water, he is almost guaranteed to be surrounded by tour veterans. As well as controlling the tempo of the race and chasing down breaks that are a threat. Alberto will likely be on one of the mid range teams with at least a few tour rookies responsible for fetching water bottles, food, in terms of strength of team he will be at a serrious disadvantage. Which means Lance’s team will be able to isolate him and attack repeatedly. Which means Albetyo won’t need to be just a little strong to beat Lance next year, he will need to be a hell of a lot stronger. And given he was only a little stronger this year, next years race should shape up to be pretty interesting.
I think the solution would be punishments for coaches, ADs, etc. who knew that they were using an ineligible player. Obviously, in this case it would be absurd, as has been pointed out, ETS didn’t invalidate the test scores until after the season.