You’ve probably heard the Louisville Cardinals will be stripped of their 2013 NCAA basketball championship due to using ineligable atheletes (among other things). The title will simply be declared vacant with no winner. Do you think Michigan (the team Louisville beat in the final) should alternately be declared the title winner, like they do in the Olympics? Would you support Michigan doing an “unofficial title” like some older teams or this year’s UCF football team have done?
That’s what happens in the olympics. When a medalist is disqualified after the fact, everyone else below them moves up. One problem with this basketball example is that it’s a bracket rather than something like a race. Michigan lost in the final, but Wichita State lost to Louisville in the final four, and Duke lost in the elite eight. Who’s to say what would have happened in Duke-Wichita, or one of them against Michigan?
As a Michigan alum, I voted an emphatic “Go Blue.”
As an Indiana fan living in Louisville, I concur.
This Spartan says the title rightfully belongs to our friends from Ann Arbor.
To go back to the Olympics example, for many races there are heats that determine the participants in later races. So, that is inherently similar to the bracket concept. What should we do with the persons who were knocked out due to last place in the earlier heats?
So, even though I am solidly “Go Blue!” by birth, I think that vacating the title for 2013 is more appropriate than awarding it to Michigan.
Absolutely not - how absurd. You can’t get a championship for a game you lost. The title is vacated - not given to someone that didn’t earn it.
Absolutely not because vacating wins and championships and awards is the stupidest punishment known to man.
Pretending those games didn’t exist doesn’t actually make them no exist anymore.
They exist but you don’t get to benefit from your cheating.
Until the NCAA develop the ability to travel through time, there isn’t much else they can realistically do about that. Louisville also lost scholarships, recruiting visits, and was heavily fined.
As to the poll, I voted no. I don’t think Michigan is any more deserving than say Wichita State, who Louisville defeated in the semi-final.
There’s no way of knowing who would have won the championship, if Louisville had been eliminated at the proper time, as it could have been one of the other teams they beat. There’s no good solution, but declaring there to have been no champion that year is the least bad solution. Together, of course, with personal sanctions against those who did the cheating, and improved procedures to prevent anyone from getting away with it again, but I presume they’re also doing those things.
No, because that assumes that Michigan would have won the championship game if they had played a different team. I don’t believe a champion can be declared based on an assumption.
Besides, can anyone with an iota of pride truly feel like a champion under those circumstances? Several years ago, I won a tennis tournament when my opponent had to retire due to a severely strained quad. I just didn’t feel like a true champion, and there’s always been an asterisk in my mind for that reason. I’d have rather played the entire match and lost than win under those circumstances.
YES! and that means I won my bracket that year. . . the pool master is gonna hear about this!
mc
I’m willing to go there though. Maybe Superdude will visit.
Boeheim is a scumbag and should have played man to man, not the zone defense played in biddy leagues. Had he grown a set and played as Dr. Naismith had intended, Indiana would have continued rolling. Make quick work of Marquette next round, spanked Michigan (…again) in the F4, and beaten Louisville outright for the title.
So, congratulations on your 2013 runner-up finish, Shockers!
Loss of scholarships, money and other tangible punishments I am A-OK with and encourage because the university actually FEELS that. Being told you can’t claim a win from 5 years ago is a joke of a punishment.
By that argument, we should never declare champions at all, because the schools don’t feel it.
Oh man, do I have to go back to the 2013 tournament thread and recalculate everything? 
This is how I see. No winner that year.
Not at all, just the opposite in fact.
The schools feel it when they win the championship. They have the joy/bragging rights, the marketing and, most importantly, the uptick in recruiting and fame and all that jazz. By retroactively taking the championship away you aren’t actually taking any of that feeling away…so it’s a pointless endeavor.
Not really. Schools tend to be measured in part by how many championships they won. It also affects the coach, who can’t claim the title on his record either.
I agree with the first part. Maybe Michigan can share it with the other five schools that Louisville beat in the tournament. For those of you claiming that it’s not fair that Michigan would have to share it with a #16 seed, then how about giving it to the highest seed that Louisville beat - Duke?
As for the second part, not only does Long Beach’s Little League “feel like champions” for being the only USA league to win back-to-back Little League World Series titles even though the first was won by forfeit because the team that it lost to in the championship game had illegal players, but everyone else seems to as well; nobody (besides me, anyway) seems to point out that the other teams that lost to the team with the ineligible players had those losses count. The same goes for the team that won the Texas high school football championship the same way; the team that lost to the team that eventually forfeited the title was the one on which the book Friday Night Lights was based.
Time to break out my idea for a movie: Michigan is going to challenge the other five schools Louisville beat in the 2013 tournament to a tournament, with the 2013 players, for the now-vacant title.