What?
Do you remember that time you caught that pass but then Doyle Jackson and Alabama took the ball, and a Rebel victory, away from you?
Uh, yeah. Why in the hell do you gotta bring tha--
Because it kinda-sorta never really happened!
Ok, so it still happened, and there's nothing that can be done to reverse that per se, but at the very least we can take some sort of solace in the NCAA's recent decision to uphold it's ruling that Alabama did not, in fact, win any games from 2005 to 2007.
"Oh, so that means they lost?"
No, not so much. They have "vacated" several wins. That doesn't necessarily mean they lose, and it certainly does not mean that their opponents for those games "won", as they would were the NCAA to ask them to forfeit said games. It's more or less a chickenshit way for the NCAA to actually appear as if they truly concern themselves with the academic well-being of their most lucrative athletes and yet another opportunity for Auburn fans to annoy everybody else with their anti-Alabama rhetoric (Nick "666" $aban bought DARWINIST bookx for the teem Parole Tide, etc.)
Frankly, I don't know the finest details of the texbook scandal. I don't know who was "right" or "wrong" in this case, nor do I really give a damn. I know Alabama fans will feel "cheated" but, honestly, nothing is really being taken away from you. You still have your 'crootin, your Saban, your crystal ball, your overrated barbecue, and everything else that makes Alabama football what it is. And the same would be the case for Florida, LSU, Georgia, Tennessee, or any of college football's other cash cows. Were this to have happened to Ole Miss (or Mississippi State, South Carolina, Vanderbilt), one could hypothetically posit that vacated wins wouldn't be all the NCAA asked for.
Granted, there wouldn't be many wins to vacate from 2005 to 2007, but let's not miss the point here.
These sorts of violations would assuredly mean fewer athletic scholarships and perhaps even postseason restrictions for smaller schools or even smaller conferences. Of course this is all conjecture tinged with the uniquely bitter, paranoid, woe-is-me cynicism only Ole Miss Rebel fandom can provide, but my point remains: Alabama really has nothing to complain about other than a few slapped wrists. Others would have suffered far worse fates.
That's fine though. It's water under the bridge I guess. Let them keep doing whatever it is that they do so long as we don't lose sight of the fact that it is always okay to hate Doyle Jackson.