In a parallel universe Bradley wins the 1988 NCAA Championship

A couple of recent factors make this a fact -- except not in our universe....but in a parallel universe.

First -- we talked recently about Stephen Hawking...
http://bubravesblogger.blogspot.com/2010/09/most-significant-scientific-event-or.html

..and Hawking is a believer that time runs on an infinite number of different courses....parallel universes where things are similar yet different, based on variables.
It's not worth the time it would take to try to debate the pros and cons of the parallel universe theory -- but let's say --
IF.... just one tiny factor was changed back in 1984, then the whole world would have changed dramatically --- let's explore this...

You have to read what NBA HOF'er Charles Barkley just admitted openly and publicly...
Charles played at Auburn from 1981 through 1984, and he now admits he and many other top college players cheated.
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16350

Now -- recall, that Bradley was caught and penalized for "violations" just about that time. BU's violations were horribly minor, brought about by a disgruntled player who lost some of his playing time, leaving school and ratting to the NCAA a bunch of lies and exaggerations. In the end, the NCAA found a grand total of a couple incredibly minor things like the mere PROMISE (not the actual act itself) of a job for a recruit's father, and pocket-change amounts given to help with transportation!!
Nothing that even comes close to players getting money and getting paid while at the school like Charles Barkley now admits.
Regardless of how trivial the allegations and findings, Bradley still was harshly penalized, and duly served their time but were fully eligible again in 1988 and had a great year!
Bradley was clean in 1988 and deserved their every win and also deserved more as we shall see....

Had Barkley's school, Auburn, been properly checked out by the slack and negligent NCAA who were sending all their hubby-hunting field agents to Peoria, then Auburn would have also been found guilty of FAR MORE SEVERE violations and then they too would have been penalized...
Given the kind of lag time between the violations and penalties that the BCS schools always enjoy - almost 5 years on the Reggie Bush case - and Auburn's penalties would have to have included nailing them with post-season bans and forfeiture of games where ineligible players were used...then 1988 would have been different in our parallel universe.
Recall that Anthony Webster's back-stabbing allegations were after he quit and went home in the 1983-84 season, then almost certainly by the time the NCAA actually found the violations at Auburn where Barkley and teammates were being paid...and by the time they got around to imposing the penalties which would have definitely included either a 1988 post-season ban...or vacating their wins that year - then Auburn would NOT have been eligible to play in the NCAA Tournament in 1988 or they would have been found to have used ineligible players deemed pros because they were taking agents' money like Reggie Bush and OJ Mayo!

So -- in retrospect it is only fair to vacate all their wins from that season, and thus make Bradley the winner of the first round NCAA game in Atlanta in March of 1988.
Now - remember - Barkley made it clear, that all the top college players, the ones with obvious futures in the NBA, were ALL getting favors from the agents and getting money from them at the time...thus it would only take a little bit of fact checking to find that the next FIVE games that Bradley would then have played in the 1988 NCAA Tournament were ALL against opponents who also had future NBA guys on them, and thus a little fact checking there would have found similar agent ties and illegal gifts and "loans"....thus their players would have likewise been ineligible and those teams would have to vacate wins and forfeit them.

Oklahoma - which went on the win the Southeast Regional and play in the Final Four had Stacey King, Harvey Grant, and Mookie Blaylock, THREE well known future NBA'ers, plus Ricky Grace - a 4th guy who played in the NBA.

Louisville and Villanova - the other two teams BU would have had to beat to win the Regional also had a multitude of future NBA'ers...
Pervis Ellison (the 1989 overall #1 Draft Pick), LaBradford Smith, Kenny Payne, Felton Spencer, Doug West...

So - with those ineligible future NBA'ers...and all those vacated wins, Bradley advances to the Final Four, ultimately faces Arizona, then Kansas....and of course using Charles Barkley's testimony, the NCAA would have surely found the same illegal agent gifts and money being given to Arizona's Sean Elliott, Tom Tolbert, Anthony Cook, Steve Kerr, and Jud Buechler (well, maybe not Kerr or Buechler..they seem like pretty nice guys).
As well as likely finding even worse graft at Kansas with Kevin Pritchard and (gasp) Danny Manning, who Kansas at that time broke open their piggy bank and paid Danny's dad, Ed Manning, a ton of money and then placed him on the bench as a token "coach" just to fool the NCAA into thinking nothing improper was going on...
Surely NCAA would have found enough to vacate all of Arizona's and Kansas' wins...
and then ...
Bradley, in our parallel universe is declared the winner of the 1988 NCAA Championship!!

But here's where we get back to Stephen Hawking.....
Hawking's parallel universe theory also allows for the different but parallel universes to sometimes come back closer to each other and even nearly merge when identical events occur at precisely the same times in both universes!
(..he even theorizes possible transport between them!)
I believe that the recent and almost unprecedented digging and finds by the NCAA at major universities has indeed brought the parallel universes back closer together.
Of course they're still not as close as I'd like them to be...and I think the person in the other universe that looks exactly like me but isn't me because he's in a different universe....that guy must be really happy that the NCAA over there is actually fair and catches the cheaters and penalizes them, unlike what happens here.

The recent NCAA actions against USC, Tennessee, Kentucky, Memphis, UConn, and a few others...are helping bring our universe back to where it really should be (and as a corollary this makes me much happier but still not as happy as the guy who is me in the other universe) BUT -- there's still a HUGE expanse between the way things are and the way they really should be. Hopefully in my lifetime, I can have the satisfaction of seeing the guilty get punished and the good guys get their rewards!



Last thought -- we all know the current federal government is on a spending spree, the likes of which could never have even been dreamed in prior generations....
And instead of cutting spending, the feds think they can solve it all by hitting taxpayers harder -- so everyone had better watch out!!
But here's one of the laughable paradoxes that might cause you to get a hernia if you think about it enouigh and really get laughing...

The Federal Government thinks that if they hire LOTS more IRS agents, then they can go after lots more people and squeeze them harder and get more money -- like maybe they can squeeze enough out of the American taxpayers to solve the deficit??

Check this...
The IRS is hiring thousands MORE agents to do audits and nail people for more money..
http://www.ncestateplanningblog.com/2009/05/articles/tax/tax-enforcement/irs-to-hire-4500-new-revenue-agents/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x445821
http://scaredmonkeys.com/2010/03/21/barack-obama-finally-has-jobs-bill-16000-new-irs-workers-will-be-needed-for-obamacare/

...so we're talking the IRS hiring possibly as many as close to 20,000 new agents...and those are generally well trained, well educated accountants and people of similar background....so it'll cost IRS at least $80,000 or $100,000 yearly for each one and likely double that given the inefficiencies of the government and the crookedness at the upper levels where they'll be sure their cronies get payoffs...
But you also have to add in the costs of going after all that extra money -- which isn't easy because the government would have to take and put people's property up for auctions...etc...
thus the total cost per year just to employ all those new agents would be in excess of...

$10,000,000,000 and maybe lots more!!!!!
...so are they going to even be able to squeeze the current taxpayer enough to get that much more money from them?? Doubtful...even if they find people might owe more taxes, in order for the feds to get that money they'll need to pay more legal expenses, hope the taxpayer doesn't file bankruptcy, and even if they can squeeze it out, it'll put more people out of business and onto welfare rolls!
In the end, it's a huge net loss for the ignorant feds...but then who ever said they were smart? I guess if they were smart they'd find a career or start a business instead of sucking off some crony giving them a job...

I say BACK OFF FEDS.......get out of the lives of the people who have done so well for over 200 years of living in and operating a great free nation, starting up zillions of businesses and creating wealth out of nothing -- something the government can NEVER do!!!...
We just don't need an opressive and unpopular government breathing down our necks and taking what we produce like those that governed back in Robin Hood's time.
You will actually create MORE poverty by taxing people to death...
but then we all have a VOTE come this November -- and I think it's gonna be a bloodbath with the big government people getting killed.
Hey big-gov-guys...revenge is a bitch isn't it........