The Ohio State University is vacating all of its 2010 victories. I can only imagine the partying in Ann Arbor.
The Michigan fans must be ecstatic that what they saw in November, a loss to its biggest rival, is converted to a victory. Now being outscored and winning on a technicality must be huge incentive for revelry.
The reason that Ohio State is taking an eraser to the what has already happened in fact and deed, is that five of its players sold items, given to them.. That's right they had the audacity to sell items that they owned.
Ok, the NCAA is trying to keep amateur sports pure but only it seems to the detriment of the student athlete and not the institutions that form the group.
I do not deny the sales were against the rules or that Jim Tressel was wrong to cover it up. The rule though is extreme and the sport would not even be blemished a little bit had the NCAA not made a minor infraction seem like a capitol crime. The world would not have given this offense a glance. College students essentially selling class rings or t-shirts or jersey's shouldn't even concern the general public. Every citizen has a right to sell, barter or trade its own property without restriction.
To make matters worse the hypocrisy reared its homely head, when the revelation preceded the big time Bowl game. The student athletes were not punished for the multi-million dollar event as serious as this infraction was supposed to be, no they were to be punished in the first five games of the season.
I wouldn't blame any college athlete for telling the NCAA sanctioned by university presidents to take their lofty, ideals and take a flying leap only to land on their posterior on the pointed self interest.
The action to vacate the wins for 2010, including the Sugar Bowl was done voluntarily by Ohio State.
It also comes with a back-handed slap to the greedy institution, the NCAA.
Buckeye athletic director Gene Smith explained the move to the USA Today.
" We tried to benchmark our case against previous cases, which is really difficult to do because our case is a little different," Smith said. "But we felt it was the right thing to do. We technically played players who should have been ineligible, and we felt we needed to vacate those games. It was really hard, particularly for those kids who weren't culpable -- and there are still some of them here."
The NCAA should have made these players ineligible for the Sugar Bowl, if you are to believe that the players actions compromised the integrity of the sport. To allow them to play because the networks had money invested and promoted the players involved, most notably Terrelle Pryor, is the height of hypocrisy.
Now that the game that millions of viewers watched no longer counts, I think the NCAA should show integrity and reimburse the network, the sponsors and each and every viewer who spent precious time to watch an event that did not count.
Come on NCAA show some integrity. Compensate us if your high handed bureaucracy has any integrity at all.
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