Russia’s Track and Field Team Barred From Rio Olympics
By REBECCA R. RUIZ JUNE 17, 2016 The New York Times
Russia’s track and field team is barred from competing in the Olympic Games this summer because of a far-reaching doping conspiracy, an extraordinary punishment without precedent in Olympics history...
... unanimous vote that Russia had not done enough to restore global confidence in the integrity of its athletes ...
... when the Rio Games begin on Aug. 5, no track and field athletes will compete under the Russian flag
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The NCAA has punished colleges for such things as recruiting violations and their athletes receiving unapproved monetary rewards. Punished colleges have had their offending team banned for years from football bowl games and the NCAA basketball tournament. Individual athletes may also be banned if they are still in school, although often they have already left, which is one reason why the colleges are punished. Unfortunately, future athletes can pay the price for offenses committed by their predecessors.
There is unfairness in both examples above. However, both have an inherent policy that punishes not just individuals but also the team. Baseball has nothing even close to that and it's not addressed anywhere but on this blog when I first suggested vacating wins and banning teams from the tournament.
In the Olympics and college sports, the athletes are amateurs. Baseball at the highest level is professional, what I call the Major Baseball League. The players are well represented by a powerful union. Both the league and the union have an incentive to mitigate any interruption of the money flow.
Melky Cabrera: should his stats be purged and his team's wins vacated? Sunday, August 19, 2012
Melky Cabrera was suspended 50 games by the Major Baseball League (MBL) for using performance enhancing drugs (PED) ...
What about the record of Melky's team? Without Melky the Giants would probably have won fewer games. Shouldn't the Giants wins with Melky playing be vacated the way the NCAA does with rules violations in football? And shouldn't the Giants be banned from the MBL tournament for a couple of seasons?
For the 2005 college football season playing for the University of Southern California (USC) Reggie Bush won the Heisman Trophy as the nation's top player. However:
On June 10, 2010, the NCAA announced major sanctions against USC. The NCAA found that Bush had received lavish gifts ... As a result, USC was given four years of probation and forced to vacate its last two wins of the 2004 season – including the 2005 Orange Bowl – as well as all of its wins in the 2005 season. The Trojans were also banned from bowl games in 2010 and 2011 and will lose 30 scholarships over three years.
Last but not least: Melky was MVP in the 2012 All Star game, which though an exhibition, carries the weight of designating which conference champion receives home field advantage in game seven of the finals of the MBL tournament. Shouldn't that result also be vacated and home field advantage awarded to the American Conference?
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If drugs enhance performance, doesn't that help the team? Monday, April 13, 2015
... the degree of disappointment in a banished teammate is directly related to the contribution to the team made by that teammate and that contribution is directly related the degree to which the banished one's performance had been enhanced by his use of performance enhancing drugs, hence the term.
Duh.
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