College football would never tempt going back to replay a game for actual competitive imbalances like a really bad missed call that sways a result on the field, but they do choose to negate championships long after the fact for things like eligibility rules violations.

And it’s never for violations that could affect the outcome, like a pro player doubling as a freshman wearing an imposter jersey using performance enhancing drugs to help win a bowl game – no that type of cheater doesn’t exist that we know.

Instead the NCAA chooses to heavily punish sketchy off field dealings (that are really hard to prove) between the families of sweetheart college star players and prospective agencies shadily courting them for future professional endorsements.

Uh huh ...the University of Southern California Trojans didn’t really cheat when they crushed Oklahoma University in the Orange Bowl game 55-19 to lay claim to a share of the college football title after their 2004 undefeated season.

AFFECT THE OUTCOME?

What happened was their star running back, Reggie Bush apparently had some dealings on the sly a month before with a recruiter for a player agency and that somehow made everything that USC accomplished in 2004 and most of 2005 null and void.

So once again we embark on the road to deploring the NCAA need of dotting the “i’s” and crossing it’s “t’s” with a wide bristle paint brush even when every other character gets shrouded in the process and nobody can read the truth.

Reality is that what Bush allegedly did, what the coaches and athletic director at Southern California should have telepathically been aware, had really no effect on the game(s) that USC won that season.

If a pro agent lurking in the shadows lends a new suit to Bush’s parents for Bush to wear at a press conference and he gets a limo ride there it should not have such a long domino effect.

I’m only summarizing part of what is alleged to have happened with Bush, and I don’t wish to trivialize the rules that the NCAA has about players earning money or rewards for their potential stardom while still in college.

The Bush’s were caught, but not right away with the rented digs and a free limousine ride or whatever. USC people claim to not have known about these violations when the bowl season arrived. They say if they would have known that they would have deactivated their star player from participation pending a review and reported the issue to the league.

The stories about Bush and the inappropriate gifts he received did not break publically until 2006 after the Rose Bowl and after the USC season when someone near the situation created a stir in a blackmail twist.

So none of us knew, and none of us suspected, but that doesn’t remove the burden from USC administrators. USC somehow should know what every player and his next of kin is up to at any time even surrounded by the glamour and glitz of the Hollywood studded USC locker room full of wealthy eager alumni that tend to want to dole out favours to players in support of their school colours.

Whatever Bush was involved in was hard enough to detect, and if he weren’t a star NFL player today it may have just remained unearthed. Heck, it took five years to investigate so it couldn’t have been every easy to prove.

And still what does it have to do with football and who should be (or not be) champions of the Pac-10 and NCAA in 2004?

NCAA OVERREACTS AND LATE

It couldn’t have actually affected the big game. It is hard to imagine that even if the ineligible player were taken out that USC wouldn’t have won the Orange Bowl that January.

That is the NCAA overreacting in 2011 about what nobody knew in 2004 and deciding that one of the most complete and greatest teams the sport has witnessed can just be wiped from the books and vacated from their earned victories in a declaration of staunch no tolerance only necessary because NCAA rules as they are can’t really be enforced at the moment they are broken.

Those of us who watched the game and any game of USC’s undefeated season might as well have just been watching exhibition games.

In having USC vacate the 2004 championship the NCAA has no provision to name another champion in their stead, and honestly, six years late who would want it?

There were five teams that all had a stake in the Orange Bowl result between USC and Oklahoma that night. Auburn and Utah also undefeated thought they could have been champions but the BCS determined the USC-Oklahoma winner would be the top team.

The USC season was an exceptional season and players, like Matt Leinart (QB), LenDale White (RB), Steve Smith (WR), and Lofa Tatupu (LB) in part used the national title game to propel their spots in the NFL draft and into NFL careers. Players made more in their draft spot and first contract based on how these players made out.

So you can see that real tangible things transpired out of the USC program which is retroactively being erased years later.

The 55-19 game won by USC took real bets in Las Vegas and the score probably covered some steep winnings.

The game sported an Orange Bowl record five-touchdown exhibit by quarterback Leinart, and three of those were passes to Smith. USC had 525 yards total in that game; averaging 8.3 yards on each play, and Oklahoma really did turn the ball over five times.

It actually did happen, I watched it happen and the chronicles of my life and that of many others will say there is no denying the best team actually did win the Orange Bowl that night needing only a ho hum effort out of ineligible player Reggie Bush.

I know that it is six years after now, but 76000 fans paid an average of $195 each to watch that game, and many of those spectators flew across country to be there. The television networks were there and USC was there to win convincingly and be put in the discussion of greatest team ever. Hours were spent on sports radio and in the opinion pages discussing the USC victory which overshadowed the greatness of other contemporary news events of the day that did not get as much discussion.

The Trojans were the best college football team of 2004-05. They were so good they piled up 34 consecutive wins through the 2005 season. That is something to try and find ways to celebrate for the good of the sport and should not so readily be abandoned.

They almost won again in 2005, and if Texas’ quarterback Vince Young wouldn’t have stepped up to legend status in that title game to upset USC would the sport have had to vacate back to back titles?

EXTREME REMEDY

Vacating a title to me seems an extreme remedy at any time, especially when it happens for reasons having nothing to do with skill or ability or who is the best team. We aren’t talking about blackening out O.J. Simpson’s old records here. Reggie Bush didn’t kill anyone or even plagiarize an essay – why so much fuss?

I know that the NCAA has standards of honesty, and integrity is part of that, but policing needs to be done in ways that does not always drag the whole process through the mud where trophies get returned and banners need to be lowered down from field house rafters.

Pete Carroll who coached USC in those years before returning to the NFL last year with Seattle thinks that even if the trophies and banners have to be rescinded they should still be called National Champs because that is who they truly were that year.

What is the long term effect of the penalty?

Carroll said that he doesn’t agree with the sanctions against his former program. The repercussions and real victims of the decision to punish USC are players today in the USC program that need to deal with the fallout from events they had no way of controlling when they were in grade school.

This decision to take away a title and some wins is symbolic but doesn’t really hurt Bush, his family, the agents, and the coaches that could have intervened, and doesn’t hurt the generation of players like White and Smith that made their way to pro ball because of what USC gave them. It certainly doesn’t affect Carroll either as he left USC a year earlier probably well aware that staying would have left him in the doghouse when the program got sanctioned.

So what does vacating a title really accomplish?

It does absolutely nothing to restore the image of NCAA, though it might scare some boosters and athletic directors to tow the line at other schools. If they would come down hard on USC they certainly will not flinch at misdemeanours in places like Akron or Boise State.

The other punishments against USC in this case are more lasting, but can be considered too little and too late and are afflicted on the most vulnerable new athletes who were only in junior high football when the Bush transgression unfolded back in 2004. There is no way of Bush making things better for any of them and now the league makes it worse.

In addition to having to vacate all national titles during the Bush years when clearly few teams were even their equals, USC is stripped of 30 athletic scholarships over a three year span up until 2014, and banned from competing in any bowl games for two years.