Powder-puff punishment

No wonder the illicit money continues to be scattered like birdseed. No wonder 18-year-old kids who couldn’t afford a clunker are suddenly driving new cars. No wonder family members who live in poverty are coming up with the dough to fly across the country for games – or to relocate to the city where their son plays basketball.

We shouldn’t be stunned that so much cheating goes on in college basketball. Not after Thursday. In the case involving former Memphis guard Derrick Rose and his fraudulent SAT score, the NCAA might as well have used a bullhorn to deliver its message to coaches across the land: Serious and repeated improprieties don’t bring serious repercussions.

Or at least don’t result in penalties with any lasting impact.

Not to a player, in this case Rose, who is now making millions as the NBA’s reigning rookie of the year. Not to someone such as John Calipari, who left Memphis last spring to become the country’s highest-paid coach at arguably its most high-profile program – Kentucky. Not even to a university such as Memphis, which was supposed to be on watch while the subterfuge occurred.

No one’s future was dented here. Calipari brought the nation’s most ballyhooed recruiting class with him to Lexington. A pair of standout players – Will and Antonio Barton – assured new Memphis coach Josh Pastner that they have every intention of honoring their commitment to the Tigers.

The penalties the NCAA dished out are a joke. More than causing Rose and Calipari to look shady, they made college sports’ governing body look spineless.

It’s the same old story.

Memphis will have to vacate its 2008 Final Four appearance and NCAA record 38 victories after it was deemed that an unidentified player [Rose] was ineligible for all of the 2007-08 season. The athletic department was charged with failure to monitor and placed on three years’ probation, and any monies earned from the NCAA tournament that season will have to be returned. Calipari may have to forfeit a $300,000 bonus.

That’s not a slap on the wrist or even a tap on the toe to the parties involved.

Memphis didn’t receive any real penalties such as a postseason ban, and it didn’t lose any scholarships. Calipari wasn’t named in the allegations and will continue his career as if nothing ever happened. Never mind that this is the second time one of his teams had to vacate a Final Four run. It happened to Calipari’s 1996 Massachusetts squad when star player Marcus Camby was found guilty of accepting improper benefits.

Don’t let it happen again, Calipari’s employer was told back then, or you’ll be sorry. Memphis heard the same thing in 1985 when it had to vacate its Final Four appearance because of violations that occurred under Dana Kirk.

It happened again in Memphis. It happened again with Calipari.

Were there any lasting effects from the penalties levied the last time Memphis was flagged? It was shut out of tournament play for a year. Will there be now? Not if Thursday is any indication.

What makes the current Memphis sanctions – or lack thereof – so inexcusable is the apparent lack of effort in looking into the matter by the NCAA Committee on Infractions. The group claims to have “investigated” the SAT situation. If that’s the case, the organization comes off looking more like Barney Fife than Sherlock Holmes.

COI chairman Paul Dee said the group never bothered to investigate whether someone indeed took the test for Rose. He said the Educational Testing Service’s decision in May of 2008 to invalidate Rose’s score was enough to determine he was ineligible the previous season.

This after the NCAA Eligibility Center had initially ruled Rose viable, even though his other academic credentials were called into question.

Nice, thorough work, detective.

You’d think the NCAA might also be interested in the fact that Rose – after taking the ACT test three times in his hometown of Chicago and failing to meet eligibility requirements – took the SAT exam one month before he was scheduled to enroll at Memphis. Only this time Rose traveled to Detroit to take the test.

No questions as to why Rose would’ve traveled to Detroit for the exam, or about who may have taken it for him? Even if answers were hard to come by, an attempt would’ve been nice. Dee, though, indicated no such effort was made.

“The information was available that the exam was taken outside of Chicago,” Dee said. “However, when we made the determination that the testing service had canceled the test score, it obviated the need to ask the question as to where the test was taken.”

Really? It obviated the need to get the whole story? No probe into who tied to the Memphis program may have known about it or been involved? No questions about how such a sham could have been orchestrated, perhaps in an effort to prevent it from happening again?

Talk about lazy. Talk about ineffective. Talk about inviting another program or another coach to take their chances.

Vacated victories are soon forgotten. The biggest eraser in the world doesn’t wipe out the fact that Memphis played in the Final Four, and in the national championship game, in 2008.

The lure for a coach or a program to attempt to cash in on superior but sketchy talent still sells.

Because no one in their right mind is buying what the NCAA is spinning as punishment.

Such limp-fisted enforcement only invites for the rules to continue to be bent. Coaches can and will continue to sign high-risk players who can put their programs over the top.

The potential reward far outweighs the risk.