What's the point of vacating?

[grunewar]

Good points Nevada. The penalties should definitely be stiffer.

I guess one coach who might differ is a guy like Bobby Bowden......who's trying to keep up with Joe Pa and would be very sad to see some of his victories "vacated."

[bbcof83]

Agreed. The Gophers had to "vacate" their '97 final four and our official record during the Clem Haskins era ('93-'99) is 0-0, regular and post-season. What does hurt a program is they took away scholarships and put the program on probation, which we're just recovering from now with Tubby. But the "vacating" of victories and banners alone does nothing to penalize the program.

[Adam]

It's not like they take away fans' memories; which is what drives booster dollars.

[Camron Rust]

The entire problem is punishing the right party. In some infractions, the schools will have done everything they possibly could to detect/prevent infractions and will not be aware that anything occurred.

The problem in this situation (and I admittedly don't have all the facts) appears that the school is being punished for what Rose did in HS...quite possibly without any knowledge of the university or the team.

The school doesn't supervise any SAT test. AFAIK, the school didn't provide the stand-in for Rose or coach Rose on how to get one. The NCAA cleared the player as having an eligible score. To financially punish the school for an infraction they didn't know about and couldn't have known about or prevented is going too far.

Vacating games may even be a bit extreme.

Now, if Memphis knew (not rumors, but confirmed facts) about the infraction at some point, subsequent games should be vacated and the fines should be levied.

The result of the entire situation should be for the NCAA to find a better way to validate student-athelete's eligibility so that teams are not subject to disqualification after the fact.