Well if the NCAA takes into account what we’ve actually lost as a result of all this: one of the best players in college football, one of the best coaches/recruiters of a generation, and a 5 game suspension for our starting LT, WR, and RB, it amounts to a substantial punishment. I’m just not sure how they will account for those things when considering their own punishment, and to that extent, offering to vacate wins does not seem genuine. I picture Gene Smith making a “jerking off” hand motion if this is all they levy against us. Vacating wins won’t change anything, and it doesn’t seem to me like an effective deterrent. It doesn’t put OSU in any different of a position than they were before, so why do it?

Part of it, I guess, is my feeling that it would cheapen the entire affair for the NCAA to claim that after firing tressel, kicking TP out, and suspending our best offensive players, what they really wanted us to do was vacate the season. I want to believe that institutional enforcement of the rules, at least to the NCAA, doesn’t take such an obvious second to making money, past and future off of such a big program. Otherwise, the system has even less legitimacy than it did before, thus doing nothing to deter future violations, and some may argue, even serving to eoncourage them.