NCAA Being Obnoxious

OK, so I'm no FSU fan. In fact, I really don't like Bobby Bowden. However, the NCAA is just not being reasonable. Apparently, some FSU football players cheated in an online music course. The NCAA's position is that every single player who cheated was ineligible until reinstated. Now, thats seems a bit off to me. You commit a violation and you are suspended from your team upon committing the violation that no one knows about yet and remain suspended until reinstated. Keep in mind, this means you would have to suspend yourself while any investigation takes place, until you are actually proven to have cheated, given a punishment, served that punishment, and reinstated. So much for innocent until proven guilty. Tough to maintain that innocence while you are busy serving a self imposed suspension hoping that the NCAA eventually catches on to your academic cheating so you can play some football again.

This may not seem so bad at first, until you hear the second half. For any game in which any player participated at all who was ineligible (remember you are "ineligible" from the moment you cheat until the moment the NCAA reinstates you) FSU is required to forfeit the game. Thats right, from 2006 through 2007 any game that was played in which FSU won and a player who had cheated played, regardless of whether the school or anyone else knew about it, will be retroactively forfeited. Now THIS is ridiculous. The NCAA is going to strip a lot of totally innocent and unknowing people of their victories because 1 player played in the game after they had cheated but before anyone, the team included, had any way of knowing about it?

It seems to me the punishment should fit the crime. The crime is not worse because people don't know about it. Put differently, the unsuccessful incapable cheater who immediately gets caught following a test should not receive a lighter sentence (or his team a lighter sentence) than the mildly successful cheater who cheats in precisely the same way on precisely the same test who doesn't get caught for a few weeks. That second cheater should receive the exact same punishment as the first regardless of how quickly they were caught. Certainly the team should not have to forfeit wins because some players cheated on a test. This is lunacy. Maybe if the team helped them to cheat that would be one thing, but no such allegation exists here. The NCAA thinks the team itself had no knowledge or involvement, so why should the team forfeit wins? Individuals should receive their individual punishments...and they are serving lengthy suspensions, but the team shouldn't be smacked around like this.