There has been a lot of fantastic basketball this March.   But there is still a question that goes through my head – and apparently, I am not the only one who had this thought because I saw articles on it from both USA Today and CBS, and I would not be surprised if even the announcers on TBS say something during the game.

But the ACC portion of the Final 4 between UNC and Syracuse bring to the forefront the scandals of college basketball.   On one side, you have Syracuse.   Syracuse was brought in front of the NCAA Committee of Infractions with multiple issues ranging from not following their drug testing policies, academic fraud, and extra benefits.   And so Syracuse did what a team about to be smashed by the NCAA – they “self-imposed” a 1 year post-season ban.   But lets be honest, everyone knew exactly what they were doing.  The Orange were 15-7 at that moment of the 2015 season and struggling with injuries – they were a long-shot to make the NCAA tournament as it was.  So, they basically self-imposed a ban on going to the NIT in an attempt to get leniency.   The NCAA slapped another 9 game suspension on Syracuse – which he was allowed to take in December while they were playing the likes of Colgate, Cornell, Montana State and Texas Southern.   And now here they are now playing for a national championship.  Seems like a fair punishment for years of breaking the rules.

At least they were punished.  Because on the other hand, you have the Tar Heels.   Everyone has known about the academic fraud that has embarrassed the University of North Carolina.  And it is totally unclear about how bad the punishment is going to be – because the investigation has dragged on forever.   As was reported by USA Today, in August just 4 days before the deadline to respond to the allegations against them, UNC conveniently announced that they had discovered more violations involving their women’s basketball and men’s soccer team.  This meant that the NCAA would have to revise their charges against UNC and the 90 day clock for UNC to respond to those charges would start all over.  And of course, this meant that by the time all of that finished, the 2016 men’s college basketball season featuring the pre-season #1 North Carolina Tar Heels, would also be completed.

So, the schools cheat against the rules, and then use the horrible NCAA infraction process to their advantage to figure out when they will take their penalty – likely at a time they probably weren’t going to be competitive anyways.    Actually, it really makes me wonder how bad the NCAA is going to come down on Louisville for the stripper scandal – they self-imposed a 1 year ban at a time when they were a contender.  You have to imagine they feel they are looking at something much longer than 1 year if they made that choice.

And while the ACC scandals are obviously the larger elephant in the room, it made me wonder about the other two Final Four teams.  At Villanova, Jay Wright’s program was put on a 2 year probationary period because they had enough secondary infractions that it accumulated into a major infraction.  It seemed like the biggest issue was around a phone code scandal that might have been purely the players doing things they shouldn’t have – but it still put a bad spotlight on the Villanova program.   At Oklahoma, Lon Kruger was brought to the university in 2011 because of his reputation of cleaning up programs and still being successful at winning after the Sooners were dealing with issues from Kelvin Sampson and Jeff Capel.    So, it looks like Villanova’s and Oklahoma’s programs are cleaner (or being cleaned up), but they have had to deal with their own problems.

If everything I have read about Lon Kruger is true, it makes me want to root more for the Sooners.  In an era of win at any cost, it sounds like Kruger runs his program the right way – and so there would be something awesome about seeing him win.   And when the tip off happens, no one will be thinking about any of this.   There will be just be 4 really talented teams playing for the National Championship.  And over in the shadows of Houston’s NRG Stadium will be the elephant – most likely standing close to NCAA President Mark Emmert, who will be wondering if he will be handing the trophy to a school he just recently punished or one that he is about to punish.