You've probably heard by now the University of Alabama was penalized by the NCAA for giving away textbooks to its athletes. The major penalty was a whole lot of vacating of games.

Yes, the official record books will now show that the Crimson Tide football team did score more points than its opponents for 21 games between 2005-2007, but those wins will not count in its overall record.

If there's a more empty punishment in the entire world, name it for me.

Alabama officials know that's the case and that's why they were surely smirking while they asked some intern to wear down the "8" button on the keyboard—that's the one that also has the asterisk on it.

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This "win never happened" idea is a complete joke and has to stop. Unless that is, the NCAA can make it meaningful by taking some of my suggestions.

1. Work with Google and every search engine to eradicate every record of every report of every game in question.

2. Force players, staff and anyone who attended the games to drink a special juice that makes them forget everything what happened in those games.

3. Take away any money made by anyone during those games, from concessionaires who sold hot dogs to scalpers who got rid of their tickets.

4. Mandate to television partners that highlights of such games can never be played again.

5. Announcers who reference these games will be penalized. Bringing up games in question will mean that every game they announced will be deleted from human history.

I know, this all sounds ridiculous. But it's not any more ridiculous than the current sanctions. Vacate is the root word of vacation and that's exactly what this penalty is.

Questions?  Comments?