NCAA Proves Uselessness Again in Memphis Fiasco

It was announced earlier this week that the Memphis Tigers would be stripped of their 38 wins during the 2007-2008 NCAAB season and that they would have to give up their Final Four as well.

The NCAA also said that the Tigers would have to take down all banners mentioning their amazing 38 win season and the Final Four berth. It has also brought some heat on Kentucky because their current coach, John Calipari, coached the Memphis Tigers in the 2007-2008 season.

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This is the second time that one of Calipari’s teams has had to forfeit a Final Four berth, Calipari’s Final Four team at UMass had to take down their banner after it was discovered that star center Marcus Camby had accepted cash and prostitutes from a sports agent, and some college basketball watchers are putting the issue squarely on the shoulders of Calipari. The ultimate college basketball watch-dog however, the NCAA, has exonerated Coach Calipari of any wrong doing.

Whether or not Coach Calipari did anything wrong or not actually isn’t the issue to me. The issue I have with this situation is how the NCAA handled it from the beginning. The infraction, the reason that Memphis has to take down their banners, is supposedly because some folks from an SAT board decided that Derrick Rose, Calipari’s star recruit in 2007 and the future number one pick in the NBA Draft by the Chicago Bulls, didn’t take his own test.

Okay…but Rose took the test some time before joining the Memphis Tigers and the NCAA cleared him to play for the Tigers and for Calipari. So, my question isn’t whether or not Rose took his own test, but why it took the NCAA so long to get to Memphis for the infraction. In other words, if they didn’t believe that Rose took his own test at the time that they received the test, why clear Rose to play at all and then wait a year after the fact to get on Rose, Memphis and Calipari for the bad test?

If there was a question in the beginning, then why not wait for the “results” of the fact-finding regarding the test before clearing Rose, and why did it take so long for the NCAA and the company that runs the SATs to come to a conclusion?

This is what gets me about the NCAA. Rules are broken, yes, and those who break rules should be punished, yes, but to retroactively punish a program after the fact makes absolutely no sense. What’s done is done and the Memphis Tigers did win 38 games and make the Final Four in the 2007-2008 season. Those are facts.

What isn’t a fact is whether or not Rose took the test. Here’s the thing: it hasn’t been proven, without a doubt, that Rose did or did not take his own test.

The best the researchers at the SATs could was say that there was a probable chance that Rose didn’t take his own test. So, the NCAA strips a team of 38 victories, a Final Four berth, and places them on three years probation because of a “probability”?

Something definitely stinks about this situation, but it’s not Derrick Rose or John Calipari or the Memphis Tigers.

It’s the NCAA and the SATs which wouldn’t be so bad if their stink didn’t have such a terrible effect on everyone involved.