By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The NCAA needs to investigate the possibility that KU's Darrell Arthur didn't earn the grades needed in high school to let him play for the Jayhawks' 2008 national championship basketball team.
If Arthur wasn't on KU's team legitimately, the NCAA should strip KU of its national title.
That would send a strong message to high schools and to colleges that it truly matters whether athletes actually qualify for the teams they play on.
As The Star's story reports, Arthur wasn't eligible to even be playing on KU's national title team if the allegations are true.
So without Arthur, would KU have defeated Memphis in the 2008 NCAA title game -- much less a few other high-quality teams in the run to the championship?
The answer is simple: No.
The NCAA ought to clear up this question as soon as possible to determine whether the Jayhawks legitimately won the 2008 title.








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I'd hope they are stripped
I'd hope they are stripped of the title as well there's no reason to allow the cheating considering how many kids through out high shool cheat then instead of graduating college opt for a fake degree i would hope the NCAA takes action agains the school's.
You have got to be kidding...
"Well Put"
"If the NCAA lets KU keep its championship, the message that will send to high schools is loud and clear: the NCAA doesn’t really care if they obey the rules or not."
Are you serious or just a sycophant? How can you say that with straight face when the NCAA is the organization that gave the approval to let DA play...it wasn't KU's call...it's the NCAA who makes that call. The NCAA goofed up...not KU. Unless DA was getting awful grades at KU, they had no cause to suspend or dismiss him.
You either have a twisted sense of justice or you're an MU/KSU/UT fan who can't "turn it off". If Missouri or Texas or K-State were in the same boat as KU, I would be man enough to say "nah...not their fault...let em keep the title".
I got no problem stripping all of DA's college credit or taking away his ring (or whatever they give the students who win the tourney) but Rush, Collins, Robinson, et al. did nothing wrong and you better believe they'd likely want no part in him being on the team if this could potentially happen.
As a real-world comparison, if you do a background check in good faith and it comes up clean and you still take negative action (especially if the person is black...which DA obviously is), that is a lawsuit and you're going to lose it handily.
Never mind the fact that the alleged trangression occurred TWO YEARS AGO and this teacher is just now piping about it...not to mention it's AFTER two years of college and AFTER a national title has been won.
This story is either completely fake or this joker has exquisitely bad timing. If I was a teacher and someone changed the grade I legitimately assigned, I would raise a major stink ASAP. You hear the term "dirty trick" in politics? This one stinks like one in a bad way. It's either deceptive timing or outright deceit and KU should bear no punishment for either.
Jayhawk fans will love this
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DCFdRiMiK8g
Yes, this is real. I know him. He's graduating from my high school this year and he's going to KU!
Brilliant plan!
Take away the championship to set an example, so then ALL schools will need to hire investigators to research ALL possible recruits.
Probably need 5-10 investigators per prospective recruit to interrogate all that may have been involved in the grading.
Shouldn't need to go back any further than 1st grade digging for records of favoritism that influenced a student being promoted to the next grade without earning it.
Brilliant plan Yael, we can all rely on you to solve the problems athletics create in academics.
Is this your only job?
it happens
As a recent high school graduate, I can speak with some authority on this subject. I think, Yael, that you are being a bit naive about the way that prep sports operate. I went to private, all boys high school that prided itself on its sports programs. Education came second at best to the school's football, basketball, and baseball programs. I had football and basketball players in my classes, and I will tell you and everyone who reads this that the teachers go so easy on the elite athletes that by their junior year, they may as well stop coming to class. Alot of them do. They turn in their homework half done and many teachers, while not turning a blind eye, do grade easier, and will give them the benefit of the doubt on the "B-C" and "C-D" line, so that they can qualify acedemically for the clearinghouse. It happened at my school. There was an athlete who should never have graduated. Dumb as a rock. Somehow his grades cleared an he is currently attending a D-1 school for football. In conclusion, the entire system is so thoroughly screwed up that the only thing that will result from NCAA sanctions or a removal of the title is a stigma on the KU program for being made an example of. No athletes are going to want to come here and play, because Kansas already got caught doing what every other high school and college in the country does. The only way to fix this issue is to get rid of the "one year in college rule." Stern is doing this to protect the owners, not the "student athletes", like he claims. If you want to come to college to learn and improve your game, then we want you at KU. If you don't want to be here, you're going to try and circumvent every rule in the book. Exempla gratia: O.J. Mayo.
Sure - yank the title from
Sure - yank the title from the Jayhawks, who could have had no prior knowledge. It's extremely important to send a message that lying and cheating not be tolerated.
Why, for a perfect example of how Americans never EVER tolerate lying and cheating, you need look no further than ex-President William Jefferson Clinton, who repeatedly enjoyed oral sex with a young intern in the White Office, then denied it to avoid legal repercussions in the Paula Jones lawsuit, who was seeking verification that Mr. Bill had engaged in the same kind of activity that she was directly accusing him of. That's called 'perjury', by the way, when you do it in a court of law. But, oopsie, even when the President of the United States was stripped of his law degree and publicly humiliated by the entire Supreme Court who refused to stand for his State of the Union Speech, somehow that was okay.
So I ask you, fellow Jayhawks - if it's perfectly okay for the President to lie and cheat, then why on Earth would you wish to strip the Jayhawks of a national title when they didn't even KNOW that one of their players had himself not even lied or cheated, but that HGH school (not even college!) personnel had on his behalf, so he could continue playing for them?
Puh-leeze ... and exactly how fair is that to everyone else on the team who had no knowledge of that? You just plan to flush THEIR achievements down the toilet in an orgiastic and false paen to the God of Honor and Truth???
DARRELL ARTHUR
How can you punish a college because of cheating in High School. If every college degree that has been received by students in high school probably 1/2 of the degree's handed out would need to be returned. A college only asks for a transcript when someone attends college (athlete or not) they have no way of knowing if the score was received by cheating in high school or if in first grade Mom & Dad helped on a project the child turned in as their own. If Darnell's college were the subject then KU should be investiaged. Since it is his high school that is the subject & you want to send a message punish them loud and clear, not the university that they attended. Also all other diplomas from that high school should be quesitoned & checked & all High School degree's stripped. Whey should university athletic departments be the only ones in quesiton. A lot of Corporations in or country also have CEO's & very high profile people running them that may have also cheated in high school, so should those corporations also be punished? KU only had his transcripts to go by (they didn't teach at the high school at the time), also why should the other team members be punished for a misjudgement of 1 person prior to them even knowing who he was. They also worked VERY hard to get where they are NOT ONE PERSON MAKES A TEAM SUCCESSFUL.
Eligibility
The NCAA declared the lad eligible for scholarship. KU had no way of knowing about the false grades... if that's what occurred. The University has to rely on the veracity of submissions by high schools and by the OK of the NCAA. It truly is blameless in this mess and should NOT be punished.
Yael, well put.
If the charges turn out to be true, KU should lose its national championship. KU should not benefit from the cheating that occurred. If the NCAA lets KU keep its championship, the message that will send to high schools is loud and clear: the NCAA doesn’t really care if they obey the rules or not.