Louisville basketball: Cardinals no longer 2013 national champions

The NCAA has denied the University’s appeal on sanctions from prior infractions. The school of course, is upset by the ruling.

When the FBI Investigation into college basketball was brought into the public eye, no program was more affected than the Louisville Cardinals. They lost both their Athletic Director Tom Jurich, as well as Hall-of-Fame Head Coach Rick Pitino.

But the University was already under scrutiny for a previous incident, one that also involved impermissible benefits for the players. Former assistant coach Andre McGee was alleged to having strippers and prostitutes in the basketball dorms for players and recruits. The charge from the NCAA was that at the time Pitino was failing to monitor the program, and that the players were received those “benefits” were deemed to be ineligible.

Louisville knew they were going to get hit hard, but the hope was that they could avoid both postseason bans and losing wins – and titles from the past.

But the announcement today proved otherwise, with the school having to vacate over 125 wins from 2011-2015, as well as the 2013 National Championship. The Final Four appearance in 2014 has also been erased. It’s the first time ever that a title has been vacated for a basketball school, and even the money won from playing in these tournaments ($600,000) has to be returned as well.

The reaction from the school was disappointment of course, with the current President Greg Postel giving out a statement, decrying today’s ruling:

Outside of the money, the vacated wins and titles are more of an issue with the record books, as the 2013 team won the title on the court in front of millions of people.

But while these new sanctions won’t have an effect on the current team, the timing couldn’t be any worse, as the Cardinals are gearing up for the stretch run to solidify their spot in the NCAA tournament.

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So is this a fair punishment considering the infractions involved? Or is the NCAA once again being inconsistent when it comes to its rulings (UNC academic scandal)? Tune in to Busting Brackets are we’ll have opinions and thoughts from all sides of this looming debate.