The NCAA is ridiculous. Yet again, they have chosen to punish a school in a way that does nothing to actually deter schools from doing things wrong. I’m talking, of course, about Memphis’ moronic punishment that was handed down yesterday. If you missed it, the school has been forced to vacate all 38 wins from two years ago – the year they lost in the championship game to Kansas by blowing the last couple of minutes of the game then tripping up badly in overtime. They will also be on probation for three years, though they lose no scholarships or postseason eligibility during that time. There are a couple of violations at issue, but the main one is that Derrick Rose likely wasn’t eligible for the season.
Rose had tried three different times in his native Chicago to get an SAT score high enough to make him eligible for the NCAA, but he failed. He then went to Detroit and recorded a score that was not only high enough to qualify, but also significantly higher than he had previously recorded. Based on that he was admitted to school at Memphis and cleared to compete by the NCAA. Months later, the company that administers the test detected enough issues with Rose’s test that they rejected the result. That meant that Rose didn’t have an eligible SAT score, so he shouldn’t have been eligible to play. He obviously did play, and he was the biggest reason the team did as well as they did. Hence the punishment.
The NCAA’s approach to punishment here is ridiculous for so many reasons. Among them:
– The NCAA had responsibility for this situation as well – they had cleared Rose to play along with Memphis, and they could have known that Rose’s test had been rejected just like Memphis did. They are punishing Memphis for their inaction, but their own inaction is just as culpable.
– This does nothing to punish Rose. He’s the one who seems to have cheated, but nothing at all will happen to him. Sure, he faces a bit of embarrassment, but he’s still a multi-millionaire Rookie of the Year with a very bright future. In fact, if he did cheat he got away with it in the ultimate way – he only became the number one pick based on his play down the stretch of the regular season and in the postseason. Before that, Rose was wildly inconsistent, and Michael Beasley was the consensus number one pick. Rose took a risk and it turned out perfectly.
– John Calipari suffers nothing but embarrassment for the situation, either. He either knew what was going on or he should have. Either way, he used that season and the one that followed as the springboard to land one of the premier jobs in the country, and then to land the top recruiting class in the country and a legitimate look at the national championship. He won’t learn anything from this because there is no incentive for him to. How do I know that? Because this is the second time that Calipari has had tournament wins vacated. It also happened when he was at UMass.
– The only people who do really suffer is the current program. The new head coach, Josh Pastner, gets to deal with the fallout of the situation even though he wasn’t even with the program when Rose was. That is ridiculously unfair.
