You’re replacing some percentage of that feeling with shame, guilt, and anger. Not enough of a punishment on its own, but a fine addition to the more tangible penalties.
I agree. For all we know, Louisville’s first-round opponent, Farleigh Austin Peay Tech Valley State, could have won the tournament if they hadn’t lost in that first round to Louisville. It’s absurd to speculate on who would have won the tournament if Louisville hadn’t been in it.
No, Michigan should not be named the champ. They played the game and Michigan lost.
The vacating of wins and championships is a silly punishment. Does Louisville have to give back revenue earned from merchandise that says “2013 Champions?” Of course not. So who’s really being punished here? NCAA punishments should (mostly) be fines.
And there were. They were fined $600,000 (their shared revenues from the 2012-2015 NCAA tournament seasons). They had previously lost scholarships, skipped the postseason tourneys a couple years back, cut recruiting visits, fired their coach and other piddly stuff. It’s not like the vacating of the wins and championships was the only thing to happen to them.
So do the people that bet on Louisville to win the tourney have to give back the money?
Plus, they will not receive their share of the money they would have received for those four tournaments, which goes through 2021 (a conference gets money each year based on how its schools did in the previous six tournaments). Note that, the way this usually works is, the other schools in its conferences (Big East, for 2012/2013, American for 2014, and ACC for 2015) will keep their shares of any money earned by Loiuisville’s appearances in those tournaments that have already been paid out, but future payments will not include those Louisville shares (about $3.4 million in 2018, $2.4 million in 2019, $1.4 million in 2020, and $800,000 in 2021).
No. It’s like the 1969 Kentucky Derby; Dancer’s Image was declared the “official” winner, but later, the horse failed a drug test and was subsequently disqualified, with Forward Pass declared the winner; however, bets on Dancer’s Image to win were paid, while bets on Forward Pass to win were not.
But they still won the championship. Even if it’s not “officially” recognized by the NCAA, they still won that game. I know it, you know it, their fans know it, ESPN and CBS know it and so do boosters and potential recruits. I would be willing to bet ESPN has on their graphics package all of L’ville’s titles and just has an asterisk for '13 that says “rescinded by the NCAA”, so it’s being shown anyway.
From a coach’s perspective he can’t officially say he won that championship, but everyone knows he did that, too. Since Pitino is kind of an asshole I doubt someone is going to hire him again, but his assistants might still get jobs and basketball programs aren’t going to give a shit that their championship were taken away when they interview them.
Call me jaded, but there ain’t no one in that school that feels any of that. I’ve been around the behind-the-scenes of college athletics enough to know that there wasn’t anyone on that team…coaches, players, assistants, ADs or anyone…that DIDN’T know this stuff was going on. They’re more pissed they got caught than they are pissed that their championship is being taken away. They’re most pissed about the tangible things like money and scholarships. Scholarships more than money because programs like that aren’t hurting for cash.
About 0.0%, approximately
Put it this way: What’s the argument for not taking away the championship? You can argue that it doesn’t matter what the NCAA says, and in that case, why complain something that doesn’t matter? And if you argue that it does matter what the NCAA says, then they have to say that the cheaters don’t count as winning.
I voted no because I think vacating wins and championships years later is stupid. I’m not saying that because I’m a Louisville fan (I’m not). It’s never happened to a team I like and more often than not it’s happened to a team I hate. Still think it’s stupid.
Yeah, I mean the punishment handed down from NCAA should be, except in some extreme cases, limited to fines. Rather than vacate wins and so forth, just increase the amount of the fine.
Normally, I would agree with you about ESPN - I remember in 2016 when they showed a list of teams with multiple NIT titles, and it says, “St. John’s - 6” in huge letters, then in the fine print at the bottom, “Includes 2003 title vacated by NCAA” - but they may make an exception for this because of how big it is.
The proper response to, “They still won,” is, “Anyone can win if they cheat.”
It would be more accurate to say that they succeeded in giving the impression they won the championship.
An analogy would be Rosie Ruiz, who was able to give the impression she won the women’s division of the 1980 Boston Marathon, but who actually covered much of the distance on public transportation.
If you deliberately skirt the rules, you can’t validly claim to have won a championship governed by those rules.
I’m not sure I’d describe hiring escorts for your recruits as “cheating”.
I would if the recruits were married. 
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I’m always up for a visit. Where am I going? I’m not parsing your meaning.
I get where you’re going, but that’s not really the best comparison because Ruiz cheated on an abilities level. The NCAA schools cheated on, I dunno, an administrative level? I guess?
They weren’t giving their players PEDs or cheating on the court, the schools cheated to get them to the court. Once the opening buzzer sounded the games were all won due to the ability of the players, not by any artificial means.
Yes. But if they had followed the rules, they might well have had different - and conceivably less skilled - players on the court.
Would you describe paying players as “cheating”? Same thing, but with different currency.
Kentucky Sports Radio reported that U of L troed to negotiate keeping the banner up, and just removing “NCAA” from it. Pitino said U if L should continue the fight to keep their championship. They have to return trophies, remove their piece of Final Foor flooring, and so forth. Of course they’ll be mostly pissed about getting caught, all the penalties spring from getting caught. But don’t tell me that taking down your banner and memorabilia won’t sting.
I live here, I talk to U of L fans and listen to them on the radio. They aren’t shrugging this off, it’s painful.