When a school's sports team is put on probation by the NCAA, they usually have to forfeit victories for the season the rules violation took place. This leads to funny looking historical records in a school's sports media guide. Like this entry from the 1993 football season from my alma mater the University of Alabama.
1993
SEC Western Division Champions
Record: 1-12-0/Actual: 9-3-1
The footnote at the bottom of the page in the media guide says the wins were forfeited by the NCAA.
This week the BCS (the power conference football title game system) stripped the University of Southern California of not only its 2004 national title win - but also nullified USC's 2005 season participation in the Rose Bowl against the University of Texas. Officially saying So what would a new entry in the UT media guide look like? Would it say:
2005 National Title Game: Texas 41 - ** 38?
With a nice little footnote at the bottom that the BCS vacated the participation of the team UT beat.
Wikipedia has already taken the lead on erasing USC's last second loss to the Longhorns. The site's BCS National Title Game page lists the game like this:
#2 Texas (Big 12) 41-Vacated (Pac-10) [no score given]
Not even the BCS website has gone that far. It still has USC in the title game against Texas - with a related link on the side mentioning the decision to vacate USC's national title win and game participation.
Reaction to officially NOT having an opponent has been - interesting - to say the least from UT fans. This post from "Bevolt" on a Statesman story about the sanction seemed to show a little confusion over the BCS ruling:
"The University of Texas Longhorns are the 2005-2006 National Champions. Whatever sanctions the NCAA placed upon the Trojans for their improprieties can never take away The Horn's win. We won fair and square."
A true if not defensive statement considering the BCS action didn't actually take anything away from UT - since they won the game. Oklahoma fans and graduates should be more upset about the whole affair. They got KILLED by USC in the 2004 title game against an illegal team. But that hasn't translated into the BCS passing the national title on to the Sooners. 2004 will instead remain a year without a champion.
