Cheaters never win and winners never cheat or do they? The NCAA Committee on Infractions recently came down hard on the University of Memphis basketball team for violations of using an ineligible player. In addition to a three year probation, the Tigers were forced to vacate their 38-2 record from the 2007-2008 season, under then Coach John Calipari (which included a trip to the National Championship in an overtime loss to Kansas), take down their Final Four banner and return any money earned through the NCAA Tournament to Conference USA. In a sports nation where the weight of the win falls upon the shoulders of much more than just the student athlete, who exactly is to blame when there is fault to be found?

Allegations against the University of Memphis first began with suspicions that star point guard from Chicago, Derrick Rose, had someone else take the SAT in his place. After Rose had already been cleared by the NCAA Clearing House to be eligible for play at Memphis; inquiries from the Chicago Public School Internal Audit division lead to investigations of these allegations by the ETS, the SAT security testing agency, and the University of Memphis.  Memphis was unable to substantiate any of these improprieties and cleared him to compete and again, he had already been declared eligible by the NCAA. So Coach Calipari did what every coach in the country would have done…play their star point guard and keep trying to win. Through lack of response from Derrick Rose, the ETS declared his score invalid in May 2007, a whole month after Memphis had lost to Kansas.

How can the NCAA clear a player as eligible based on their guidelines and procedures, only to revoke its decision and then blame the University of Memphis for having gambled with playing an athlete that may or may not have had a questionable academic record at the time of play? If Memphis did their due diligence as outlined by the NCAA to prove Rose eligible, than how is it their fault when a test score gets invalidated almost a year after it was taken? But as the NCAA views initial eligibility as a “strict liability” situation; so sorry Memphis, you are going to have to take the fall.

Obviously somewhere along the way someone didn’t quite do their job and the only ones getting punished for it are the University of Memphis. Even as punishments go, Derrick Rose was only one player (albeit he became the number one NBA draft pick) but isn’t solely responsible for those 38 wins. He had a team and staff that created their winning record, so how is vacating such an accomplishment fair for the rest of the Blue and Gray. Shouldn’t more parties take part in the blame? After all, if Rose cheated than others had to know about it and at the end of the day this happened under the watch of an SAT Board who gave him a passing score, the coaches and athletic staff who recruited him and of course the NCAA who cleared him in the first place.

Derrick Rose has moved on to his career in the NBA, Coach Calipari has moved on to be the highest paid college basketball coach at the University of Kentucky but the Memphis Tigers are left with funny little asterisks where their record breaking winning season use to appear.
If the NCAA ever hopes to admonish cheating and up the standards in college basketball, than everyone is going have to play a bigger part by taking more responsibility for their roles and actions. But as long as the punishments don’t deter the crime and the faulty parties are never the ones taking the fall then the NCAA will continue to hand out penalties that never carry any weight into the future but merely alter our pasts.

by Shauna Horn