Punish the Punishers in the NCAA

USC is probably going to get hit with some sanctions by the NCAA. They didn’t actually do anything wrong, you see, but they supposedly have a lack of institutional control. They should have made sure that the products they put out to represent their university were even with all the teams they were playing.  I agree. It seems like the Trojans should have had some oversight over these high profile players, and I do not think I am being unreasonable to want that.

Kansas forward Darrell Arthur, it turns out, may have not even been eligible to be playing this season. His high school grades may have been altered to make him eligible when he should not have been. So, naturally, Kansas will be hit with some sanctions by the NCAA.

What?!

Although the idea of a forfeited national championship and a vacated season have been floated out there, they just make no sense. It was not Kansas’s job to check the eligibility of Arthur. I believe the NCAA declared him eligible themselves, and they have no one else to blame. After all, they were the ones responsible for an uneven playing field this year.

Because of their mistake, the premier event in their arsenal, March Madness, has been called into question. Maybe Memphis should have won the title, or maybe it should have been North Carolina. Maybe Davidson should have had a shot to make a huge upset in the Final Four. One thing is for sure, Kansas would not be opening next year as defending champions if they had not had Darrell Arthur.

Unfortunately, the NCAA might blame Kansasfor their mistake. The NCAA won’t have to doll out the millions they made off a rigged event. This is not to say they intentionally rigged it, but rather that their problem shifted the entire tournament. If they can dish out punishments to the USCs or Indianas, why are they not held responsible for their own mistakes?

So how could they rightfully make up their mistake? They could start by doubling the money given to the Memphis athletic department. Memphis may have lost more than the game, they may have lost a high-level program. Instead of an innovative offense, coaches can point that they could not win the big one. What if they lose the next Derrick Rose because their offense lost to the conventional offense on the big stage?

After that, they need to take a large fine out of their own income, say five or ten million dollars. Then, take some of the coaches, and ask them to use the money in a way which would be best suited to college basketball. It could reprimand the NCAA and help the NCAA at the same time. Perhaps they could even expand where this mistake went bad. With more people monitoring high school academics, fewer people would not get just shuffled through the cracks; and high school superman athletes might actually see the significance of dedicating themselves to school work. If they cannot play in college, the NBA is not going to wait a couple years for their services, see Lenny Cooke. And, at the end of the circle, you might have more school-conscious student athletes who would make the NCAA’s athletes look less like dumb jocks.

This one incident should open the eyes of fans everywhere that the NCAA has too much power. They punish universities that had nothing to do with illegal benefits, and I think it is time they be punished for having nothing to do with illegal academic help. Ultimately, they declared a player eligible who maybe shouldn’t have been, and they put that athlete out there for the game with the big NCAA at center court. It's time to punish the punishers.