Remember the 2008 NCAA basketball national title game between Memphis and Kansas? The overtime thriller made possible by the Jayhawks’ never-say-die tenacity, the Tigers’ poor free-throw shooting down the stretch, and Mario Chalmers’ amazing shining moment at the end of regulation?
You know… the shot they’ll be talking about in Kansas for, well, as long as there’s a Kansas?
You don’t remember it? Yeah, me neither. How could we? After all, according to the NCAA, it never happened.
The Final Four in ’08 was, for the ninth time in NCAA history, actually a Final Three.* Kansas had a bye in the championship game. That Chalmers shot was purely a figment of your imagination. Rock, Chalk, Forfeit!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate this particular penalty. I find it Orwellian and absurd. Yes, it’s terrible that Derrick Rose cheated. And yes, I understand there have to be consequences. And yes, I recognize that stiff forward-looking penalties in some ways seem even less fair, given that the current coaches and players aren’t responsible for what happened in the past. And no, I’m not sure what the solution to this dilemma is. But I’m convinced the solution isn’t to pretend that historical events didn’t happen.
You can’t just flush the past down the memory hole. Memphis did play in the Final Four in 2008, and as it happened, they took part in one of the most thrilling title games ever. By all means, put an ugly asterisk next to their appearance in the record books. But don’t just erase their season. It happened. You can’t ask me to pretend it didn’t. Retroactive forfeits are lame, lame, lame.
It would be like altering the record books to indicate that Barry Bonds didn’t hit 762 career home runs, and 73 in a season. He did. Did he cheat? Yes. Should he be excluded from the Hall of Fame because he cheated? Maybe. Should there be an asterisk next to his records? Absolutely. But don’t tell me the records never happened, or that he didn’t hit those home runs. They did, and he did. Those are just historical facts. And erasing inconvenient historical facts, whether as a “penalty” or for whatever other reason, is, well, doubleplusungood.
On another note, how must Kentucky fans be feeling right now? Congratulations, you just hired the first coach ever to have two Final Four appearances, with two separate teams, vacated due to major scandals! What are you going to do now? (“We’re going to Disney World! But then our trip will be wiped from the record books.”)
*Once, in 1971, it was a Final Two!
P.S. Actually, the Chalmers shot is, in a certain way, even more significant now that the Jayhawks’ opponent has been flushed down the memory hole. That shot prevented college basketball from having its first-ever season without a champion. Although there have been eleven vacated Final Four appearances — resulting, as just noted, in nine “Final Threes” and a “Final Two,” according to the record books — including several vacated title-game appearances by national runner-ups (Memphis being the latest), there has never been a national champion who has been forced to retroactively vacate its tournament wins. If Chalmers shot hadn’t fallen, Memphis would have been the first.
