Why is it never brought up we are being punished twice?

[CL82]

No national writer is ever going to ask that because the national writers don't know anything about the APR. They know that it has the word "academic" in it and they know that Uconn had a bad score at one point in time. So the only logical conclusion they can draw from those two bits of information is that Uconn doesn't care about academics and deserves to be punished.

You won't see anyone, other than Jay Bilas and Jim Boeheim (and eventually Calhoun once he loses the incentive to suck up to the NCAA), question the APR calculation or the NCAA's method of enforcing their penalties. It's much, much too easy for the media to get on their high horse and write about the "importance of academics" and how "it's about time the NCAA started punishing people."

Somebody else already mentioned this but it's very true. At this point, the only way the NCAA can take a national PR hit on the APR issue is to let us play in the tournament. If they approve our appeal, non-Uconn people are going to freak out and claim that the NCAA is pandering to a big name school. If they use the most recent data, which is unquestionably the most "fair" thing to do, non-Uconn people will still freak out and claim that they're only doing this to appease Uconn. Conversely, Mark Emmert will get nothing but pats on the back if he holds his ground.

As long as the NCAA dangles the carrot of a possible change in the rules UConn won't directly make this point. This is being well played by Emmert, however, once we have the opportunity to explain that:

a) our one bad year would not have happened but for 3 guys who were academically eligible their whole careers made a business decision to leave early; ​

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b) we were already punished for that bad year by losing two scholarships; ​

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c) the NCAA change the rules and used old date for which there was not mathematical way for us to be in compliance despite;​

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d) the fact that would APR has been very good since, ​

the pendulum of public opinion will swing the other way. UConn as rogue program will be old news. The new and more interesting story will be NCAA as unfair tyrant. If Emmert is smart, he uses new data, probably in June and settles for the damage done to our reputation.