At this point, August 2009, it has been no mystery for a long time to many sports fans what the NCAA’s purpose really is. Puff Daddy said it best: “It’s All About the Benjamins.”

After a rather long hiatus through much of baseball season, Jack Bauer is back in wake of the NCAA’s announcement yesterday that the Memphis Tigers basketball team will be vacating its 38 wins and National Championship Game appearance from the 2007-08 season, and he is fuming.

(For the record, I am very much a fan of baseball, but watching one of the several fourth-rate reality shows is far more entertaining than watching the Padres, and I only get to see a handful of Dodgers games on TV, so that basically leaves everything else going in baseball to write about. But Dr. Sportsfan and the other fine writers of Taking Back Sports do such a good job of covering baseball that I kind of got lazy this summer.)

Nothing in sports gets me involved more in intelligent and heated conversations than the NCAA, a regime more corrupt and incompetent than Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. Jack will never miss a chance to strike blows at the NCAA, and the latest news out of  its fortress gives me the perfect opportunity to air it all out right here, right now!

So in case you missed it, the Memphis basketball team’s 2007-08 season doesn’t count because Derrick Rose (just come out with it, NCAA — everyone knows it’s him thanks to the swarming sports media) decided he didn’t feel like taking the SAT, so Rose had a stand-in take the SAT for him. This meant Rose was ineligible for NCAA sports and Memphis played the entire season with an ineligible player.

Derrick Rose didn't need a stand-in to take his shots while playing college ball at Memphis.

Note to Memphis athletic department: I know you have a ton of athletes you are responsible for, but it might not be a bad idea to make sure your prize recruits do all the necessary things to make sure they are eligible to play, including taking the SAT, a longtime staple of college admissions. Come on Memphis, even USC isn’t stupid enough to let that happen! (More on USC later.)

Besides Memphis fans, this news sickens no one more than myself, who watched in person my beloved UCLA team fall to Memphis in San Antonio at the Final Four, primarily due to the flawless play of Rose. But, Memphis did not win the national title, otherwise, based on the NCAA’s history of disciplinary action, this would be a non-story.

Historically the NCAA, especially in basketball but also football, avoids stripping universities of National Championships in major sports, but will  force teams to vacate wins in non-championship seasons. Let’s review:

Jerry Tarkanian’s battles with the NCAA are well known to many sports fans. Although he won money in settlements after he retired, it was not due to wrongful termination, but rather a violation of due process. UNLV broke several NCAA rules under Tark’s tenure, that is not disputed, but through the 1980s and 1990s UNLV was one of the NCAA’s flagship hoops programs and won a national title in 1990. Thus no punishment. Meanwhile, Tark’s previous school, Long Beach State, was sanctioned after he left and Fresno State, where Tark went after UNLV, was sanctioned following his retirement in 2002.

Tark hit the bull’s-eye when he alleged that the “NCAA was more willing to punish less-prominent schools than big-name schools.”

The story of Michigan basketball’s “Fab Five” is well documented (images of Chris Webber spring to everyone’s mind). Both of their Final Four seasons were vacated due to major NCAA infractions and the banners are locked away on the University of Michigan campus, forbidden to be displayed to the world.

Ohio State was forced to vacate its 1999  Final Four run due to the actions of former coach Jim O’Brien, although recently the NCAA reversed itself and Ohio State once again has that Final Four banner hanging in the rafters.

The O.J. Mayo saga at USC is still under investigation. USC has been caught up in multiple NCAA investigations recently, but expect Troy to suffer some sort of punishment for this incident at some point in the near future. (After all, it involves only USC basketball, not football.) Tim Floyd was forced to be the fall man and resign in hopes that the NCAA would back down from this. He couldn’t escape Los Angeles for Tucson fast enough. Too bad for him the University of Arizona suspected foul.

For those who are ambitious, feel free to research deeper into NCAA basketball and football, violations, and the pattern will hold-up: actual punishment for teams that did not win national titles, a bind eye turned towards teams that won national titles.

Now for football. (Being a UCLA grad I cannot resist, but everything that I say about USC is true and is intended to demonstrate two things: (1) the hypocrisy of the NCAA and (2) that its first priority is money and not the integrity of all college sports. Only small-time programs have to follow every rule to the letter.)

Currently, the NCAA is “investigating” the Reggie Bush issue of illegal benefits while at USC, along with violations at Florida State under Bobby Bowden.

First, Bowden. The NCAA is contemplating stripping FSU of all of its wins during the 2006 and 2007 seasons, which would affect Bowden’s chase — along with with Penn State’s Joe Paterno — for the most all-time wins by a Division I head coach. The latest report from ESPN on Thursday afternoon was that the NCAA is considering allowing a compromise that would strip the university of the wins, but not Bowden, keeping him one win shy of Paterno.

What the $@!&??????

Allow Jack to clear this up for you. Florida State went 7-6 in 2006 and in 2007 and was hardly a factor in the national championship picture. Florida State football has been on a steady decline this decade and right now is not a major player for the NCAA, other than the national interest in the battle between Bowden and Paterno. Simply stripping FSU football of 14 wins in a non-title season is not a big deal for the NCAA, but to knock Bowden back to 15 games behind Paterno is bad for business and hurts TV ratings and advertisers’ interest in games involving both schools.

“It’s All About the Benjamins.”

Now for USC, NCAA National Champions in 2004 and AP National Champions in 2003. The Bush controversy has dragged on for years. Simply put, by the NCAA’s own rules, if they formally rule Bush received illegal benefits in 2004, then he is an ineligible player and USC played with an ineligible player the entire 2004 season. That would mean the NCAA would at least have to strip USC of its national championship.

Where would the NCAA be today if it consistently enforced its rules and did not overlook violations by big-time programs such as USC football, which generate millions of dollars of annual revenue?

Bush received the benefits, everyone knows it. USC no longer associates with Bush and has continued to deny him sideline tickets, while O.J. Simpson was invited into the locker room for a pregame speech. I’m not passing judgment on Simpson, but the fact that USC welcomes Simpson with open arms while running from Bush is very telling.

The NCAA doesn’t want USC to lose its national championship for obvious reasons. There is no NFL team in Los Angeles and there hasn’t been since the 1994 season. Over the past 15 seasons, USC has become synonymous with football in Los Angeles. USC has had all the star power with Carson Palmer, Matt Leinhart, Bush, Rey Maualugua, etc. and has consistently been a factor on the national stage.

There is no major college football program in New York, which leaves Los Angeles as the largest market for NCAA football in the country. UCLA is not even close to USC’s rear-view mirror in terms of college football influence in Los Angeles, which leaves USC football as the only program that matters for the NCAA in its largest market, and in turn possibly the biggest revenue generator for the entire NCAA.

It would be sheer stupidity on the level of NHL Commish Gary Bettman for the NCAA to drop the hammer on USC football for an obvious violation and risk losing millions of dollars. USC basketball, well that’s a different story, and provides the NCAA with the means to punish USC athletics without hurting its revenue darling, the USC football program.

While I personally feel it would be ridiculous for the NCAA to strip USC of a national title over the issue of Bush accepting illegal gifts, as opposed to much more serious issues like academics or substance abuse, rules are rules. Just ask any school in the NCAA that ever broke a rule and wasn’t fortunate enough to win a national championship that same season.

Before I depart, a special thanks to Mario Chalmers for giving us a moment sports fan will never forget, making that three pointer at the buzzer to send the 2008 National Championship into overtime. Without you, Memphis would have won it all and they would be “investigating” Memphis and Derrick Rose’s failure to take the SAT for decades, just like they are still “investigating” USC and Reggie Bush.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the NCAA! The same organization that claims to have a championship for football. Booya! (I couldn’t help myself, I can’t write an entire article about the NCAA without taking a jab at the BCS.)