The Out Route

Looks like the NCAA got into the business of mind erasing. In 2005, a couple of Oklahoma football players, including then quarterback Rhett Bomar, were getting paid for working at a car dealership they didn't actually work at. Basically, they were getting paid by boosters for playing football, which is college football's biggest no-no.

So, two years later, the NCAA decides to lay down the law. Their decision? To erase the 2005 season from existence. It's as if that season never happened, including the bowl game which they won. Anything denoting the season, including stationary that may mention it, must be removed. I'm sure the next step is to hire Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, and the gang to make sure we never think about it again. This is quite the interesting punishment.

The rest of the punishment wasn't too harsh. The NCAA removed two scholarships from the program and extended the sanctions that OU had already imposed onto themselves another two years. It's always nice to be allowed to punish yourself. One part of their self-punishment is they are cutting down on the amount of coaches who can recruit off campus. But the better part of their own sanctions is that for the next two years, no players are allowed to work at the car dealership -- not that any of them were really working there to begin with. I wish the NCAA and OU were my mother because those weak ass punishments didn't fly in my house. I wasn't even allowed to take money from my elderly neighbor's for shoveling the driveway. And I actually did the job.

So how does OU respond to this fluff of a punishment? They appeal it. They claim that current players shouldn't have to pay for past digressions, but that's the whole point of a punishment. A program should have to pay for their wrongs. If they lose commitments or possible recruits, that's the price you pay for poorly policing your team. In fact, if it weren't for the basketball team's own violations, this punishment wouldn't have been as bad. Obviously, there are some problems at OU, so take the punishment and start fixing things.

The NCAA has been backwards for awhile. It's not too surprising that the organization that refuses a playoff would actually punish retroactively instead of making a punishment that is based in the present. Now we wait to watch them erase memories. Let's see if the NCAA hunts down this blog and erases it as put of its large scale mind wipe.