Will Oregon also vacate all its 2010 wins?

News broke today that Ohio State will vacate all its 2010 wins, including their Sugar Bowl victory, in response to charges of major violations by the NCAA.  It has also been reported that Ohio State will place itself on probation for two years and will change Jim Tressels’s official status from resigned to retired.  This is no surprise as Ohio State would almost certainly have faced stripped wins and two years of probabtion anyway when the NCAA makes its final ruling.  This mostly is an attempt by Ohio State to see if by self-imposing some sanctions they can avoid scholarship losses and future bowl game losses, which they are not self-imposing at this point.  In my opinion, while this gesture may help a little, NCAA president Mark Emmert has stated he wants to crack down on rules violations and I still expect both scholarships and atleast one year of bowl eligibility to be lost.  In the mind of the NCAA the cover-up attempt of improper player benefits was atleast as bad as the offense.

So this brings us to Oregon. In the Ducks case we have a booster agent being paid for his access and influence with recruits and orchestrating their delivery to Oregon.  We also have a similar cover-up with Kelly lying to John Canzano that he didn’t know a Willie Lyles and never had associated with a man with that name.  Prior to the Lyles check being made public he was “scrambling” to come up with justification of what the $25,000 check provided Oregon.  Lyles knew it was for providing top talent like LaMichael James and Lache Seastrunk so he just forwarded some old info off his computer including of a dead player because he didn’t know what else to show them and understood it was all bogus anyway.  New reports indicate that Oregon is paying “The Cleaner” $350 an hour to try to prepare a case.  Since most his past work has involved mitigating sanctions, you wonder how soon Oregon might decide to suggest some self-imposed sanctions?  Oregon seems a bit arrogant still and unaccepting of the major mess they find themselves in, so we may all have to wait for the NCAA to charge major violations just like they did with Ohio State.

In the end I believe all their 2010 wins will be stripped and the Civil War will go down as *-20 with no loss for the Beavers on the official record.  It will be interesting to see if any players are ruled ineligible.  I do anticipate loss of scholarships and some kind of post-season ban for the Ducks when it all ultimately shakes out.  Atleast Oregon doesn’t have to worry about vacating BCS Bowl victories.  They lost those biggest games already.