Vacating wins is pointless

The NCAA does a lot of dumb stuff, but perhaps the most inane aspect of an idiotic, corrupt organization is the way that they opt to punish schools for breaking the rules.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- vacating wins is a pointless penalty, a punishment that literally does nothing more than create work for NCAA employees, headaches for the athletics departments, and completely worthless blog posts like this one.

The reason that I am writing this now is that over the weekend, news broke that the NCAA was going after Kentucky for incorrectly celebrating John Calipari's 500th win. You see, back on February 26th, Kentucky beat Florida in Rupp Arena, which was the 500th time that Coach Cal has been on the winning end of a college basketball game. But that figure did not account for the 42 games -- four from the 1996 NCAA Tournament run that UMass made and 38 from his 2007-2008 season with Memphis -- that have been vacated during Coach Cal's career. This pissed off the NCAA because, as you might imagine, they really don't have anything else to worry about right now.


Jerry Tipton over at Kentucky.com goes into details about what, exactly, happened. Long story short, there appears to be a misunderstanding about whether or not Kentucky "accounted" for the 42 games that Cal has had vacated.

But the fact that this has even become an issue shows just how out of wack the NCAA's priorities are.

Forcing Memphis and UMass to take down their Final Four banners aren't going to erase the memories of those two fan bases. Neither Derrick Rose nor Marcus Camby, who were at the center of the scandals that caused those 42 games to be vacated, are going to think about the fact that their Final Four experiences didn't, technically, happen while they cashed a combined $13,999,450 in checks this past season. By officially stating in the record books that Coach Cal took neither the Minutemen nor the Tigers to the Final Four doesn't change the fact that he signed an eight year, $32 million contract with Kentucky because, in large part, he was able to take two non-BCS programs to the Final Four.

Coach Cal's attitude towards the vacated victories is telling. At the Final Four, when he was asked what it felt like to be at his first Final Four, Cal responded "we've been here three times. Those players played those games and did what they were supposed to." That's the attitude that the rest of the nation currently employs. I can go back and watch Memphis choke away a national title at the free throw line. I can watch highlights of the UMass loss to (ironically) Kentucky in the 1996 Final Four as well.

Those games happened, and nothing the NCAA can do will change that fact.

But is also creates an awkward situation. What, exactly, can they do to punish offending programs? Any kind of scholarship reduction only hurts potential student-athletes that had nothing to do with the violations committed. The same goes for postseason bans and television bans -- see the 2009-2010 USC basketball team. They can't cause the firing of a coach because the coach is not an employee of the NCAA, they are the employee of an academic institution with NCAA membership. Levying fines would probably be an effective deterrent -- Bruce Pearl probably won't be lying again after getting hit with a million dollar fine -- but, again, the NCAA may not have the power to fine a power -- Pearl's money went back to Tennessee.

What is clear, however, is that vacating wins is pointless. Taking down banners doesn't erase the memories or the internet caches. And in this case, as Jeff Eisenberg points out, the NCAA is doing nothing but feeding the fodder that they have it out for John Calipari and Kentucky. I'm far from a John Calipari apologist, and its obvious that the NCAA's reaction is the result of needling from Kentucky, but in this case they are right.

Vacating wins is dumb.

John Calipari has been the head coach when his team won 509 times.

He should have the right to celebrate it without having to toe the NCAA's line.