Before I do this post, I'm going to bump up, for the benefit of anyone who only reads this every couple of days, a couple of post links to blog posts I've made on:
The laughable "penalties" to the Saints for Bounty-Gate, and what should (but won't) be done.
My original thoughts on Bounty-Gate.
A Tuohy-found article on a survey showing rampant soccer match-fixing in southern and eastern Europe.
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So, with that light reading material, if you haven't already read it, let me get to the second installment of "The Show Must Go On".
Tattoo Kiss: The 2011 Sugar Bowl Which Never Should've Been Played
(The Game Which Defrauded Another BCS Bowl Without The Rose Bowl's Wrong-Doing)
December 5th, 2010: ESPN applauds itself and the BCS for ensuring the power schools are the only ones who play for the National Championship.
As a subsidiary event to naming Auburn ($Cam) and Oregon (Nike U + their own recruiting-agent scandals) as the two schools who will play for the national title, it also announces that Ohio State earned an at-large bid out of the three-way title for the Big 10 (this was the last year of there being no Big 10 title game) to play in the Sugar Bowl vs. the Arkansas Razorbacks.
Seventeen days later, it is reported that five Ohio State football players, including stand-out quarterback Terelle Pryor, exchanged autographs for tattoos at a local Ohio tattoo shop. This, being an NCAA violation, rendered them ineligible.
The NCAA still allowed them to play in the Sugar Bowl, but that's not the point here.
Their ineligibility, once they began to exchange their persona for services, was up to two years previous (and Tressell knew of this as early as five months before the 2010 season began)! This (and the obfuscation/lying by Jim Tressell) would eventually cost them the recognition of their entire 2010-11 season, the berth in the Sugar Bowl, and Tressell's job at the university.
Since this was actually announced BEFORE the playing of the 2011 Sugar Bowl, one must then ask the question:
Why was this game even played? It was known pre-knowledge that Ohio State had used at least five ineligible players to win their share of the Big Ten championship, which led to their Sugar Bowl bid.
Usually this is investigated and found out after-the-fact (thank you, Reggie Bush), but this was actually found out before the game was played, and, yet, the NCAA actually allowed the game to go ahead, and, worse, allowed the five to play in it!
Ohio State got more points than Arkansas that night on the field (31-26), but is no longer deemed to have won the game.
Here's the kicker to this whole argument: Because of what happened in the Big Ten that year, Ohio State's participation in the contest voided the legitimacy of two BCS bowls that year, not just it's own.
To explain, we must look at the old Big Ten tiebreakers for a multiple-team situation.
The first tiebreaker in a multi-team situation is a mini-league -- head-to-head among all the teams in the tie, as long as all teams played each other!
Michigan State (the third team in the tie) defeated Wisconsin for it's sole pre-Rose Bowl loss in week five, 34-24.
However, Michigan State and Ohio State never played, as the schedule rotation in the Big Ten had the two teams apart that season.
Hence, the tiebreaker had to go to the team which was the highest ranked team in the BCS on Selection Sunday (the aforementioned December 5th).
That was Wisconsin, who lost to TCU in the Rose Bowl 21-19.
But Wisconsin (through no apparent fault of it's own!) never should've been in the Rose Bowl, because of Ohio State's illegalities!
If Ohio State had been properly stripped of it's portion of the championship, Michigan State's win over Wisconsin would've sent it to the Rose Bowl instead of to the lesser Capital One Bowl (where they got rolled by Alabama 49-7!!).
Now, Wisconsin might well have taken Ohio State's place in the Sugar Bowl, but the fact is that, if the pairings were not to be changed, the game would have to be vacated and never should've taken place at all.
Why did it? Bid'ness. $25,000,000 just for ESPN to broadcast it, as part of it's half-billion commitment over the ownership of college football through the exclusive broadcast of the BCS for four seasons.
For even the known ineligibilities, The Show Must Go On.
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