As a sports fan, I hate what the NCAA does in college sports when it comes to vacating wins. Right now there is a good example of what I’m talking about.

At present it looks as if the NCAA, the governing body of college sports, will take 108 wins away from Syracuse University for alleged basketball violations that have occurred over a decade or so. It just seems silly to punish teams by vacating wins when those games were actually played and involved players and fans that had nothing to do with the infractions. I’m okay with limiting scholarships, putting teams on probation for infractions or even shutting a program down (the so-called “death penalty”) for repeated and blatant infractions, but games that are played should stand, that is, unless the winners were using brass knuckles and lead pipes on the losers. If severe stuff like that happens, then the winners should have to vacate the win. Otherwise, let the game stand; don’t treat it like it never happened. Find another way to punish those who cheat.

Imagine if we vacated history. You know, just acted as if it never happened. Suppose somebody in charge or some governing body said, “Those Dark Ages were pretty, well, dark! That Black Death business was pretty grim. Lots of decay in culture and learning … lots of barbarian acts, lots of it by the church … lots of war. What say we vacate the 5th through the 10th centuries and, like, just jump straight from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance?”

Or how about vacating assassinations? You know, just treat those unfortunate incidents as if they never happened … Lincoln, Kennedy, John Lennon. We could vacate wars whose outcomes we don’t particularly like … Vietnam, the American Civil War. Whups! I meant the War Between the States. Things we don’t want to think about or get tired of hearing, just vacate ‘em. Vacate global warming and melting ice caps!

We could vacate the time frame between February and July for us college football fans. See, those are the months when players are on their own and picking up sexual assaults, domestics, DUIs, robberies, burglaries, popping caps and pills and acting like fools. Vacate those months and go straight from the end of one football season to the beginning of the next. Just let ‘em play, which is what I said at the outset of this piece. But, then, you can’t have it both ways.

Essentially if it’s played out we have to live with the results. Football players are going to act stupid. The Dark Ages were dark. Presidents and rock stars get killed. The future of polar bears is looking less and less polar, and the NCAA will continue to vacate the wins of teams that have offended. All is not lost, however, as we still have those who, as we speak, are rewriting history, spinning it this way and that. All I’m saying is I hope somebody will rewrite the ending of the 1965 Orange Bowl since I know durn well that Joe Willie Namath got across that goal line!

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and author.