LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Somewhere in a closet sits Louisville's 2013 NCAA championship banner. It has spent so much time in storage that it may soon qualify for historic preservation status.
Perhaps somebody should dust it off.
Not because Louisville suddenly became innocent. Not because the scandal disappeared or because the NCAA made a mistake, though some of us believe it did.
But because the NCAA itself has become the mistake.
This week, a Texas judge ordered the NCAA to allow a quarterback back onto the field after he admitted to placing thousands of sports bets, including wagers involving his own team. The NCAA handed down the sporting equivalent of life without parole.
The court reduced it to two games.
And with that, another brick tumbled from the old NCAA courthouse.
The organization once strutted through college sports like Wyatt Earp.
Courts reducing NCAA gambling bans contrast with Louisville 2013 title still vacated and stored banner
It measured phone calls. It counted recruiting visits. It investigated cheeseburgers with the determination of Scotland Yard. It knew how many minutes a coach spent watching a prospect shoot free throws in July.
It knew who bought lunch, dinner and dessert.
Now it can't stop athletes from transferring. It can't stop schools from paying players. It can't stop conferences from dissolving.
And increasingly, it can't stop courts from overruling its punishments.
The NCAA spent decades insisting that gambling was the third rail. Touch it and you're done.
Then a court came along, unplugged the rail and told everybody to carry on.
Which brings us back to Louisville.
There sits the championship banner. Still gone. Still vacated.
Still serving a sentence handed down by a governing body whose authority now resembles a shopping mall after the anchor stores moved out.
The sheriff retired. The courthouse got condemned. Yet somehow the prisoner remains locked in the cell.
It is one of the great mysteries of modern college sports.
The NCAA cannot consistently enforce the rules of today. Yet Louisville continues paying for the rules of yesterday. And a shaky interpretation of them, at that.
Every year the banner remains down, the argument becomes harder. Every lawsuit makes it harder. Every injunction makes it harder. Every court ruling that strips another ounce of NCAA authority makes it harder.
At this point, Louisville's championship banner isn't a punishment.
It's a museum exhibit.
A reminder of a vanished era when the NCAA possessed power, certainty and the confidence that its decisions would last forever.
The power is gone. The certainty is gone. The rules on which it based its ruling are gone. The authority is evaporating in courtrooms across the country.
But somehow that one banner remains rolled up in the dark.
Like the last surviving law in a country that repealed everything else.
Louisville has spent more than eight years paying for its sins.
The NCAA has spent the same years losing the power to punish anyone else's.
That's long enough.
Restore the championship. Rehang the banner.
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