I wasn't "missing" that at all, and it is
irrelevant to the point I made. The
precedent at the time was forfeiture of games and resulting money. The NCAA (rightly or wrongly) changed how they would handle such cases (I might point out here that the NCAA waited over four years between Maggette admitting receiving payments and the NCAA issuing a ruling, apparently because it was still investigating after having all the information from the school and the player. Insert LucilleBluthWiking.gif). They decided to change the punishment for cases where a player was paid and the school did not know, applied that punishment retroatively to Missouri and UCLA, and handed Duke no consequences because that
new punishment regime (which was
not the precedent) could not be applied to them (retroactively).
This isn't remotely controversial, either. It's in the article I linked: "Precedent for situations in which an ineligible athlete played in a postseason game and the university was unaware of the violations calls for the school to return 45 percent of its game revenue and give up any title it won, spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said."
See also: "
What if the precedent for such an offense called for the embarrassing forfeiture of games and the stripping of a Final Four appearance?"
The only controversial part is whether the NCAA should have changed the rule. I think the new punishment regime is better, frankly, but the undisputed facts make the NCAA look like it was changing the rule specifically so it's perceived golden child would not get punishment. It's at the very least horrible optics.