The NCAA ruled Tuesday to uphold sanctions placed on the ACU football team in 2007; however, nothing about the ruling or appeal process appeared fair to the Wildcats.

The infractions committed seem minor, a few trivial procedural errors here and there.

ACU caught the mistake and reported its own error to the NCAA. They expected a slap on the wrist and a stern warning. The NCAA saw it differently. They ruled that the violations were intentional and were committed to gain a competitive advantage.

The NCAA thought ACU needed to be punished, so they took away ACU’s wins and wiped out the statistics of two unnamed ACU football players for that season.

There are two problems with this. The first – the one that upsets people the most – is the severity of the punishment. But more than that, the penalty is an odd one. In previous cases, universities committing major infractions received the harsher punishments, including vacation of wins and stats, loss of scholarships, playoff or postseason sanctions or the rights to broadcast games on television. Minor violations, like those committed by ACU, met with a much softer penalty. Although ACU is not facing playoff restrictions, which is good, the ruling still seemed inconsistent.

The ruling was not the only thing that seemed unfair. The athletic staff felt ACU was shortchanged on the appeal as well. The appeal by ACU was similar to Oklahoma University’s 2007 appeal of NCAA sanctions for “lack of institutional control.” Following Oklahoma’s appeal, the NCAA Committee on Infractions changed the ruling to “failure to monitor,” a lesser infraction, and after a public reprimand, accepted Oklahoma’s self-imposed sanctions – the exact sanctions, in fact, self-imposed by ACU. All of the same steps. None of the same results.

The “self-imposed” part is the biggest frustration in this situation. These minor infractions occur across the nation every week. People make mistakes, unintentional and otherwise. The fact is, ACU reported a minor infraction and lost a whole season of wins. If the NCAA is going to come down that hard on all minor violations, no school will to self-report anything. We’ll go back to the days of “catch us if you can.” The NCAA ruling is unfair, and it is sending the wrong message to the rest of the college football world.

But, that is the way it goes. The wins are gone, and ACU is moving on. And that’s the hard sports truth.