In a drama normally associated with the dark world of Division I basketball, the Oberlin men’s basketball team forfeited its season on Wednesday, giving up its best record in 10 years due to an administrative oversight.
Coming on the heels of Tuesday’s playoff upset over Ohio Wesleyan, the Yeomen’s withdrawal centers on a basketball star, the rigamarole of college athletics and the penalties for failing to fact-check.

In January, as the Yeomen began heating up in the North Coast Athletic Conference, eyes were on one of Oberlin’s new post players, a transfer student, who was shooting .475 from the field and almost .500 from three-point range
NCAC policy requires that when a college recruits a student athlete from another school, the recruiting college must contact the other college for two things: permission to speak with the student and assurance that the student is eligible to participate in college athletics.
The recruiting college is still required to double-check on a player’s eligibility. Oberlin recruited the player, made the transfer and added him to the roster, but never double-checked. Any number of administrative offices could have caught the oversight.
Last week, Oberlin’s Athletic Director Mike Muska was contacted by the NCAC requesting proof of the transfer student’s eligibility. Muska sent the NCAC the paperwork from the school the student had transferred from.
Muska did not hear from them again until Wednesday morning, after the Yeomen’s victory over OWU. The NCAC said they had documentation that the transfer student would have been ineligible at his original college and was therefore ineligible in the NCAC.

The error could be interpreted as an underhanded play to get an extra season out of solid player, but it seems, instead, to be a negligent mistake.
Oberlin decided to forfeit every game he played in, which, according to Muska probably would have been Oberlin’s punishment. The NCAC will not review the event until the end of the current NCAC basketball tournament. They could further rebuke Oberlin, or allow the voluntary forfeiture to suffice. “It was important that Oberlin took the step to do this,” Muska said.

According to Muska, Oberlin plans to make an internal review into the snafu, and who should have prevented it. “[We] could point fingers everywhere…” Muska said, “But I think the responsibility would rest with me, I have to take responsibility.”
But no one is leveling a finger on the transfer student. His eligibility for future season is uncertain, but Muska added, “The player shouldn’t suffer for the mistakes of other people.”

The forfeit of the season is a sudden conclusion to the Yeomen’s turn around season. The team had not had an eight win season since the ‘91-92 season, and the team’s five- game winning streak that carried into February would be a significant success for any Oberlin team of the past years. The forfeiture also ends all further advance following hopes of the Yeoman’s unexpected bid in the NCAC semifinals.

“We had a good season, the team worked very hard. It’s disappointing it had to end like this,” assistant coach Evan Gerking said.

Regardless of culpability, the disappointment of forfeiting and the requirements of the athletic conference, the circumstances of the abrupt end to the men’s basketball season signals an odd irony of Division III athletics — and specifically the NCAC, which prizes academics over athletics: that an inadvertent mistake would mandate big-league punishment.