Should Duke have their 1999 season vacated?

In case you missed it, over the weekend Gary Parrish filed an excellent column comparing the punishment Memphis received for using an ineligible Derrick Rose to Duke's use of Corey Maggette.

If you remember, Maggette admitted to taking money from Myron Piggie, his AAU coach in high school.

The gist of Parrish's column is this: Memphis was penalized retroactively for using an ineligible player even though they initially had cleared Rose to play. But Maggette, who admitted to taking money that was in part supplied by agents, also could have had his eligibility revoked retroactively, but Duke's 1999 Final Four season still stands in the record books.

Corey Maggette received money from an AAU coach before enrolling at Duke.
(photo credit: AP)

As I'm sure you could have guessed, this upset some Duke fans. Big Duke Balls (for you Duke haters out there, BDB is probably the most intelligent and least homer of the Duke blogs out there) posted a response to it.

Essentially, what BDB says in their post is that the two offenses are not comparable. Maggette took money from an AAU coach that was completely unaffiliated with Coach K or the University. Rose had failed the ACT's three times before someone took the SAT's for Rose in Detroit, some 283 miles from his Chicago home, a few months before he was due to enroll at Memphis. Detroit also happens to be where William "Worldwide Wes" Wesley, basketball's biggest power broker who happens to have a strong connection to Coach Cal (many believe that he was behind guys like CDR, Tyreke Evans, and DaJuan Wagner eventually choosing Memphis for school), resides.

Both sides have a valid argument, but both also miss the point.

Parrish is correct in one thing - Maggette's amateur status could have been in question. He received money from a summer coach that was provided by an agent. Both sides admitted it after the fact, which means it definitely happened. Taking handouts from agents pretty much eliminates your standing as an amateur, meaning that before Maggette enrolled at Duke, he was ineligible to play college basketball.

As the Derrick Rose situation has made abundantly clear, the NCAA reserves the right to retroactively revoke a player's eligibility and vacate the games he participated in. They haven't in the case of Duke and Corey Maggette.

But BDB also makes a valid and completely correct point. These two violations are not the same. Maggette pocketed a couple grand from his summer coach, which, sad to say, is not an uncommon occurrence. Derrick Rose had someone else take the test that qualified him to be eligible, and enrolled in school with the knowledge that he should not be allowed to play. He also reportedly had some grades changed while in high school to keep him eligible. Oh, and his brother got a couple free rides on the team's chartered jet.

What happened with Rose and Memphis was much more egregious than what occurred at Duke with Maggette. Shouldn't the more serious crime get the harsher punishment? Isn't that how it, ideally, is supposed to work?

The bottom line is that while both sides make valid arguments, both of them miss the most glaring issue here. The NCAA Infractions Committee is a farce, and it is becoming abundantly clear that the NCAA has little to no control over these schools and these kids.

Let me preface this next paragraph by saying that none of it has been proven to be true, but if you read between the lines, what happened with Rose is an enormous problem. Derrick Rose had failed the ACT's three times. Seeing that his star recruit was on the brink of being denied entrance to Memphis, Coach Cal called up his buddy Worldwide Wes, who was able to get someone who could pass as Rose to take the SAT's in his stead and earn a qualifying score.

That is about as bad it gets when it comes to NCAA violations.

It isn't difficult to infer that Coach Cal helped Rose get the qualifying SAT score.
(photo credit: JohnClay)

Granted, to get to that point, you have to connect a whole bunch of dots and answer a bevy of "What ifs?", but if that is what, in fact, occurred, would anyone be surprised?

If so, what can the NCAA actually do about it?

Vacate a season?

Please.

Vacating a season means one thing, and it rhymes with hack spit. It doesn't erase the memories that Memphis fans have of their run to the NCAA championship game. You can still watch CDR's dunk over Kevin Love on youtube. Derrick Rose is still in the NBA making millions. Coach Cal still has a contract worth almost $32 million. Sure, he may never make the hall of fame, but he can probably dry those tears with hundred dollar bills.

And it is so much worse than just one instance of a fudged SAT score.

Would you be surprised if Renardo Sidney was able to afford the rent on his house in Southern California because he was being funneled money by a shoe company?

Would you be surprised if Reggie Bush or OJ Mayo were getting paid to play at USC, or if Tim Floyd was passing out envelopes full of money to runners?

Would you be surprised if UConn was knowingly dealing with an agent during their recruitment of Nate Miles?

That's just from this summer. Would anyone be surprised if these violations were just the tip of the iceberg?

I wouldn't.
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Reactions to Calipari from around the web

Before we get into the roundup, there a couple things I want to touch on. For starters, did you know that Derrick Rose "took" his qualifying SAT in Detroit? He's from Chicago, but he took it 283 miles away because his family was going to a Bulls-Pistons basketball game.

And William Wesley lives in Detroit. I'm just sayin'...

Another thing bothering me about this is that the reason that Rose's test was canceled wasn't actually because the Educational Testing Service had determined someone else had taken it for him, it was due to a "failure to cooperate". He didn't respond to letters the ETS sent him.

To his home in Chicago.

During March and April of 2008.

When he was in school at Memphis, and playing in the NCAA Tournament.

It really makes me question the capabilities of the ETS that they cannot figure out the best place to reach a college student during the school year (especially one that plays basketball on TV; all they had to do was put on ESPN or CBS to find him) is at school.

The only people I really feel bad for here is the university of Memphis itself. They really didn't do much wrong. While I understand, and partially agree with, the argument that the school should have figured out Roses's SAT's weren't legit, the fact of the matter is that the NCAA cleared Rose. The same organization that vacated the Memphis wins previously told the school Rose was eligible.

In big time college basketball, to win you are going to inevitably have to recruit some kids with question marks - be it behavioral issues, academic issues, or amateurism issues. Schools accept the students and then wait to hear about their eligibility from the NCAA. When the NCAA clears them, the school should be in the clear.

For Memphis, Rose was retroactively deemed ineligible (in May) by the NCAA, meaning the Tigers used an ineligible player all season.

Tough luck? Another example of how inept the NCAA is when it comes to issues such as this? Memphis's own fault for not doing their due diligence?

All of the above? Yes.

Follow the jump for reactions from around the web.

Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News: It's interesting, though, that the infractions committee probed no deeper into the question of whether Rose had, in fact, taken that test. The most essential question of this entire controversy was decided when the Educational Testing Service cancelled Rose's test score in May 2008. And why did that happen? Because the ETS sent letters to Rose's home in Chicago a couple months earlier—when Rose was attending school in Memphis and on the road playing the NCAA Tournament—and he did not respond to them. The cancellation of the test was "based on failure to cooperate," Dee acknowledged. So an action this profound, this lasting, was undertaken at least partly because Rose didn't get his mail. Isn't anyone else bothered by this? Shouldn't history be rewritten by someone smart enough to recognize that a student at the University of Memphis might be spending most of his time in Memphis?

Seth Davis of SI: I do have sympathy with regards to their position on the SAT. Rose got notices in March and April that there might be something wrong with his score -- are they going to, in the middle of the NCAA tournament, declare Derrick Rose ineligible to investigate this claim? Then, his test score doesn't get invalidated until a month after the tournament is over, so he's retroactively ineligible. What are you supposed to do? The eligibility center declares he's eligible and then they don't declare test invalid until after the tournament is over. I think that's why they didn't whack Memphis harder, not because Calipari's not there anymore. If you recall, the NCAA kept Kelvin Sampson off the road at Indiana after he committed violations at his previous job -- it's not like they don't have the option, they just chose not to penalize the coach moving forward.

Gary Parrish of CBSSports: My guess is that you think Ohio State was dirty under Jim O'Brien, UNLV was dirty under Jerry Tarkanian, Oklahoma was dirty under Kelvin Sampson and Georgia was dirty under Jim Harrick, but that you don't think of Ohio State, UNLV, Oklahoma and Georgia as independently dirty. Why? Because society doesn't attach filth to programs as much as it does coaches, that's why. And that's the hard reality Kentucky will battle going forward -- that whatever it accomplishes under Calipari will be met with a roll of the eyes by pretty much everybody outside of the Commonwealth. It doesn't matter whether that's fair or right or whatever.

Geoff Calkins of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal: And, yes, I know, Calipari won’t be implicated in the report. That’s part of the genius of the man. Calipari wasn’t implicated when UMass lost its Final Four appearance. He wasn’t implicated when the NCAA alleged that Derrick Rose didn’t take his SAT. He wasn’t implicated when the NCAA alleged that Reggie Rose, Derrick’s brother, made impermissible trips on the team plane, either. Maybe Calipari should think about ditching “Refuse to Lose” for a whole new slogan. Like: “Never implicated!” Or: “Not personally named!” It takes a village to take the fall for Calipari, doesn’t it? Or at least a university.

Mark Kriegal of FOXSports: So should I expunge the memory as well, to pretend that Mario Chalmers' three-pointer, the famous shot that sent the game into an extra period, never happened? And what of the fans from, say, UCLA, who traveled to Texas to get beat by a player who, it now turns out, shouldn't have been playing? Derrick Rose had 25 points, nine rebounds and four assists while holding the Bruins' Darren Collison to 1-of-9 shooting. I'm sure Bruins fans would love to forget that. Maybe it would help ease their pain if the NCAA reimbursed them for the price of their tickets to the vacated games. Actually, it's easier to pretend these games never happened than it is to imagine the NCAA parting with a cent.

Eamonn Brennan of The Dagger: If you're a coach, as long as you're careful enough, there's literally no reason not to cheat. If you're a player, and you're good enough to leave for the NBA in a year, there's literally no reason not to cheat. See where we're going with this? This investigation was basically a gigantic waste of time, energy, and authority. I hope the NCAA at least recycles its paper.

Luke Winn of SI: When Pitino was allowed to keep his job last week -- despite a morality clause in his contract that seemingly would have allowed Louisville to fire him without a buyout -- it wasn't a great day for the public image of college basketball. A message went out to present and future coaches: If you build up enough capital by winning games, your employer will be willing to overlook even the sleaziest of personal scandals. As the NCAA prepares to erase another Calipari milestone, another message is being sent: You can have not one, but two Final Fours vacated for using ineligible players, and still become the highest-paid coach in the game, at the most storied basketball school in the land. Knowing that, what incentive is left to stay clean?

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/luke_winn/08/20/memphis/index.html?eref=writers#ixzz0Op1wFdPc

rtmsf of Rush the Court: Speaking of Coach Cal (and UK fans will remind us that correlation isn’t causation), he now becomes the first head coach in the history of college basketball to have had NCAA-mandated removals of Final Four appearances at different schools. You should recall that Calipari’s only other F4 appearance in 1996 was later vacated because of Marcus Camby's prodigious affinity for cashmoney and bling. This latest Derrick Rose situation makes Calipari programs two-for-two, and, interestingly, the Memphis Tiger program two-for-three on removed Final Four appearances. Keep polishing that 1973 runner-up trophy, Tigers, it’ll be a while until the next one.

Strait Pinkie: "It is my hope that they played for Calipari, not because of money or fake SAT scores, but because of his style of play and his track record of getting players to the next level. At the University of Kentucky those two traits alone should be enough to get players to dress in blue and white. I also hope that these two traits are the reason that UK decided to hire Calipari."

Hick Flick from Rumors and Rants: There have been plenty of Final Four teams who have since had the infamous eraser taken to their Final Four apperances, with the Fab Five teams of Michigan being the most notable examples. But never has an NCAA champion seen their title stripped. Which begs a question — if Memphis had won, would the NCAA taken a different course of punishment to avoid that scenario? I think we can all venture to guess the answer to that question. But thanks to Mario Chalmers, we’ll never know. And for that the rules police in Indy should be permanently grateful.

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Memphis to forfeit victories from the '07-'08 season

According to a report from the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, the Memphis Tigers will receive a ruling today which will vacate their wins from the 2007-2008 season in which they came a few missed free throws from a national title. Along with the Final Four, Memphis will also lose their record 38 win season and 16 of their 61 game Conference USA win streak.

Back in the spring, news came out that a player on that team (eventually confirmed as Derrick Rose) had used a stand-in in order to gain a qualifying score on the SAT's. It was also alleged that an associate of that player (Derrick's brother Reggie) owed in excess of $2,000 for travel expenses from flying on the team charter.



It is the second time for both Memphis and John Calipari that a Final Four will be expunged from the record books. In 1985, Dana Kirk's squad had their Final Four erased, while Coach Cal's 1996 Final Four run was vacated after it came out that Marcus Camby was getting money from an agent.

Overall, this is the 9th Final Four run that has been vacated, although luckily none won the national title:

- Ohio St. (1999) – Jim O’Brien
- Minnesota (1997) – Clem Haskins
- UMass (1996) – John Calipari
- Michigan (1992 & 1993) – Steve Fisher
- Memphis (1985) – Dana Kirk
- UCLA (1980) – Larry Brown
- Villanova (1971) – Jack Kraft
- St. Joseph’s (1961) – Jack Ramsay

Before I give you my thoughts, here are the reactions of a couple Memphis players:

Antonio Anderson (via FOXSports):

Honestly, I don't care. We know what we did. We didn't do anything wrong, but it is what it is.

Chris Douglas-Roberts (via Twitter, what else):

They took our Final 4 but they can't take the memories. Can't take away that lefty d..nah I'm playing. K Love is my guy!

My first reaction?

What does this mean for Coach Cal's legacy? Because in the grand scheme of things, all vacating wins does is remove a banner from the rafters. Memphis fans will still have the memories of that season. Highlights like CDR's dunk will remain on youtube. The players won't be losing the memories of that experience. And it isn't like Marcus Camby hasn't had a successful NBA career.

The only thing that will be hurt here is Cal's reputation. Is he still a hall of famer?

I'm not so sure. I know the argument - he wasn't named in either report. Well, as Kentucky fans should know, Eddie Sutton wasn't named in the report that cost him the head job at UK either. Sutton is one of seven college coaches with 800 wins and has reached three Final Fours, but he isn't in the Hall of Fame.

Neither is Jerry Tarkanian. Tark won a national title and reached another Final Four while putting together one of the best teams in college basketball history.

Why aren't they enshrined in Springfield?

Scandal.

Which is now what Cal's name is going to be associated with.

Cal will go down in history as one of the greatest of all-time. (I don't know if there is a better recruiter, motivater, or X's-and-O's coach in this era.) But guys like Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, and Eddie Sutton are/were also considered one of the best of all-time.

Where are they now?
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Memphis releases report responding to the NCAA allegations

Earlier today, Memphis released a report saying they found no evidence of wrongdoing by the school regarding Derrick Rose. According to the report "the university ... took all reasonable steps to confirm that [name redacted] had met eligibility requirements."

Memphis is saying that they should be allowed to keep their victories, and Final Four trip, from the 2007-2008 season.

If the university's report is accurate, I would probably have to agree with them. It seems to be an issue of timing. According to the report, Memphis was notified in October of 2007 that a player's (the name was redacted throughout the entire report) eligibility was in question because a public school employee in his home city had notified the NCAA about possible grade tampering.

The only proof that the school had came from the analysis of a forensics expert specializing in handwriting, who said that the test "probably" didn't match the player's handwriting sample.

Is "probably" enough to keep a player ineligible? "Probably" not, especially when that player is (supposedly) Derrick Rose.

Derrick Rose is facing allegations of academic fraud.
(photo credit: Slam)

The Educational Testing Service is a non-profit organization that develops, administers, and scores tests. They told ESPN that they cannot cancel a score unless they have two credible forms of evidence.

"We can't cancel a test on one piece of evidence," ETS spokesman Tom Ewing said. "Like, for example, if someone copied we'd have to have a report from a school official and then verify it with a handwriting example. There has to be two pieces of evidence. A tip only gets the ball rolling. We cannot cancel a score on any tip, anonymous or otherwise."

Memphis received a letter from the ETS canceling Rose's score on May 5th, 2008, about a month after the Tigers had lost to Kansas in the title game. According to Ewing, on average less than 1,000 test scores (out of 3 million) get canceled, and the process usually takes about four weeks.

If the ETS started investigating Rose's score at the same time as Memphis, it was a seven month process.

Memphis officials probably knew that they were operating in a gray area, but it is also reasonable to assume that this is not an uncommon occurence. With the number of athletes that come into Memphis (and other schools with big time athletics programs) each and every year, I truly doubt that Rose's test score was the first test score - or GPA or dealings with an agent/handler or association with a shoe company - that forced the administration to look into the eligibility of that athlete.

With that in mind, if there is not enough evidence to conclusively say the kid did it, and that kid is convincing enough to make you believe he didn't (remember, Rose's image coming out of high school was that his brothers were over-protective of him and that he was able to avoid the issues of other high-profile recruits), are there grounds to make him ineligible?

If the ETS had canceled the score on November 5th, then yes. But they canceled it May 5th.

So while Memphis is not going to come off looking like the cleanest program in the country, I don't think there is enough here to prove they "knowingly and fraudulently" used an ineligible player during the 2007-08 season.

Congrats, Coach Cal. You may end up staying on the list of coaches with a Final Four.

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The latest on the Memphis situation

I'm sick of writing about Memphis and Derrick Rose and Kentucky, so I'll just put together some links to get you caught up.

- Is Derrick Rose's image tarnished (Gary Parrish)? Parrish also rips the school for how they handled this entire situation (excellent read here).

- The one-and-done rule is the reason for the Derrick Rose and OJ Mayo scandal. "If they don't want to be in college, don't force them to be there." (Andy Katz)

- The state titles that Simeon won with Derrick Rose are going to be investigated.

- Latavious Williams may reconsider his commitment to Memphis.

- Pastner spoke about the allegations.

- Kentucky's "background check".

- Cal will have to participate in a hearing on the violations.

- Derrick Rose and Coach Cal declare their innocence. In other news, the sky is blue.


And here is the rest of it. Continue reading...