The NCAA assumes that having an ineligible player automatically benefits a team. This was the rationale they used earlier this week when forcing USC to vacate victories. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. During the span in which the ineligible Student Athlete #1 partook in football contests, every game was a blowout with the exception of three… the only three where he was the deciding factor:
2006 Rose Bowl: USC vs. Texas - Student Athlete #1 curiously laterals the ball to the other team while running uncontested downfield. The points he would have scored on that play alone would have made up for the margin of defeat. Later, Student Athlete #1 stands around and watches his team fail to convert on 4th and 2. His ambivalence clearly resulted in the failed conversion. The game was lost.
2005 USC vs. Notre Dame - What would have been a dramatic yet
uncontroversial victory was marred in controversy when Student Athlete #1 placed his hand upon the back of a teammate who was in the process of scoring the winning touchdown. The game’s final result was verbally contested for years by the opposing team’s fans.
2005 USC vs. Fresno State - Student Athlete #1 blatantly disregards
his team’s strategy of winning the “time of possession” battle to
achieve victory. Instead, Student Athlete #1 repeatedly makes his
team’s possessions as short as possible each time he touches the
football, turning an otherwise easy victory into a nail-biter.
These were the only three games where the ineligible player’s participation impacted a game’s result. (Could a single player ever be the deciding factor in a blowout?) Not coincidentally, they were his team’s least successful performances. Thus, if the NCAA wants to adjust the outcomes of previous games to account for the ineligible player’s contributions, it should make USC vacate its one loss, and change the two close victories to blowouts.
