NCAA goes Orwellian to erase history

Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, February 21, 2018

It’s one of the great lines ever delivered on the big screen.

Remember in “The Godfather” when Clemenza is whipping up an emergency vat of spaghetti?

Sonny Corleone: “How’s Paulie?”

Clemenza (nonchalantly, barely looking up while still stirring the spaghetti): “Oh, Paulie? Won’t see him no more …”

Classic.

And that’s kind of the way the NCAA likes to handle things.

The governing body of college athletics thinks it can just make things it’s upset with disappear and be done with them.

A clean, professional job, you might say.

The latest trophy with its picture now plastered on the side of milk cartons is Louisville’s 2013 NCAA basketball national championship.

It never happened, according to the revisionist historians of the NCAA.

Or, at least, “Won’t see him no more …”

Oh, you might remember it as Louisville 82, Michigan 76, something like that.

Eyewitnesses at the time reported quite a bit of confetti falling about the place. Some basketball nets were cut down.

But that particular One Shining Moment was fleeting indeed.

The NCAA announced Tuesday that it has denied Louisville’s appeal in the matter, meaning that championship has been officially “vacated,” which sounds sort of like it was evicted — and right in the middle of the cold-and-flu season, too.

This is not a new ploy by the gum shoes at the NCAA.

It seems sillier every time it happens, but the NCAA is forever vacating things.

In this case, it would make an excellent movie because, among Louisville’s recruiting sins, according to the NCAA, was “arranging striptease dances and sex acts” for recruits.

There are many gray areas of the NCAA manual, but that striptease chapter is not one of them.

Still, if the NCAA didn’t want Louisville to win the NCAA championship, it should have caught it in advance.

Instead, the NCAA tries to rewrite history to its liking.

It’s not like Louisville has to hand over the trophy to Michigan. Suddenly, there is no trophy.

So now we’re to believe that the entire 2013 season was played for naught — talk about a meaningless regular season.

What if CBS takes the NCAA to court and demands a refund for all the money it paid for a championship game that never happened?

Do ticket holders for that championship game that never happened get a refund too?

One thing is convenient for the NCAA: the scene of the 2013 crime — the Georgia Dome in Atlanta — really and truly no longer exists. 

As wonderful a venue as it was, it was demolished last fall now that the shinier, newer Mercedes Benz Dome is up and running.

That seems a bit of an extreme measure just so the NCAA can keep up appearances and get rid of all the fingerprints. But when Big Brother wants something done, it leaves no stone unimploded.

It’s not just 2013 either.

As part of the same sanctions, the NCAA also now claims that Louisville did NOT go to the 2012 Final Four.

Maybe it can get the deposit back from whatever New Orleans hotel it did not stay in that weekend.

But if Louisville should ever need an alibi for the night of March 31, 2012 — and to read the NCAA report the Cards might — New Orleans can’t help them.

“No, they weren’t in New Orleans at all.”

As for the 2013 trophy, no one seems to know what happens to it.

Maybe it’s hiding wherever Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy is stashed.

The NCAA should at least put it on eBay.

Perhaps Central Florida would be interested in putting in a bid so it can have a matching set with its recent football championship.

But Louisville can’t have it.

The Cardinals can leave the blank space up in the arena rafters. It can be next to the 1980 and 1986 national championship banners, like a riderless horse.

But I would suggest that Louisville take the Florida approach.

When Steve Spurrier became head football coach in 1990, although he never had a hint of scandal on his watch, he inherited some pretty stiff sanctions from the previous regime.

The Gators, as it were, were not eligible for immediate championships as part of their due penance.

It didn’t stop Spurrier’s first team from going 6-1 in the SEC, which was the league’s best record that year.

They weren’t eligible for the championship, and knew it in advance, so the celebration was somewhat muted.

Spurrier got around to winning redeemable championships soon enough.

By the time 1997 rolled around, there was a tribune painted across a barrier between decks in the end zone seating area of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium that read:

SEC CHAMPIONS

1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996

But Spurrier apparently thought that the 1990 team deserved some sort of recognition, so next to the official championship lists, was another that read:

BEST RECORD IN SEC

1986, 1990

Spurrier had nothing to do with the 1986 team, but it had pulled a similar stunt, so it would have been a shame to leave them out.

Anyway, wits in the press box always suggested that the two tributes be labeled as:

SEC CHAMPIONSHIPS WON

and …

SEC CHAMPIONSHIPS BOUGHT

Maybe the new banner at Louisville should read something like: 2013 — Last Team Not to Lose a Game after April 4 Wink-Wink.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com