Hell yes Michigan should put up a banner now that Louisville has vacated the 2013 national title

The block was good.

I know that Louisville’s announcement that it will vacate 123 wins in basketball from 2011 to 2015 — including the 2013 national title — doesn’t alter the physics of what Michigan’s Trey Burke did to Louisville’s Peyton Siva at the rim on April 9, 2013, nor does it retroactively change the minds of the referees who blew the whistle on Burke for what appeared to be an all-ball block. But: The block was good, and I somehow feel more certain of that today than ever before.

Hell yes, Michigan should get to hang a national title banner now that Louisville has to take down theirs. I know that’s not how this works, that it would be unfair to name Michigan the champs because maybe if Louisville had been ineligible for the 2013 NCAA Tournament, another team from their side of the bracket — say, No. 9 seed Wichita State, which lost to the Cardinals in the Final Four — might have gone on to the title game and won.

To that, I say, get a load of this:

That block is good. It’s not at all bad. In fact it’s spectacular because of all the things that Burke was incredible at — his unreal efficiency, his dimes, his ability to hit shots from anywhere on the court when it mattered most — leaping and blocking shots weren’t thought to be among them. That block — it’s a good block — was maybe the most athletic play of his career, and it was taken from him, as was the national championship he deserved as the national college basketball player of the year.

The 2013 game was an absolute classic. It featured unlikely heroes like Spike Albrecht and Luke Hancock going off. It had a nice semi-underdog in the four-seed Wolverines who were playing pristine basketball in March going up against a one-seed Louisville team that had lived in the top 5 for most of the year. It featured two teams that could run and jam and light up the scoreboard as well as anybody in the nation.

It’s not that the Cardinals don’t deserve their banner (the NCAA has decided they don’t, but the NCAA being the arbiter of anything is always iffy), but more so that the Wolverines have every right to claim theirs — especially now. Look, if Burke’s good block was ruled as such, Michigan still isn’t in great shape to win. They were down three points — 63-60 — at the time. At best, the Wolverines would have tied the game — maybe — on their next possession before giving the ball back to the Cardinals.

But as things stand, there is now no national champion of the 2012-2013 college basketball season. That shouldn’t be, right? Why not the Wolverines? Giant single-elimination tournaments are dumb, anyway, as are college sports most of the time (in both good and bad ways). That Michigan team makes the case in point: They were fine during the regular season, going 12-6 in conference play and finishing fourth in the Big Ten. They also went 6-6 in their final 12 games before the NCAA Tournament, including losing in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament to Wisconsin. In a parallel universe, college basketball decides its national titles like college football does, chooses just four teams for its postseason, and Michigan gets left out with zero controversy.

The NCAA Tournament is really just a thought exercise, and in light of that, why not make up a banner, some T-shirts, and a bunch of rings like UCF did after winning the Peach Bowl? I mean, what’s the point if you don’t? We just live in a world where we treat the 2013 NCAA Tournament — and that breathtaking, unforgettable final, especially — like a dark corner of our attic that we’re not allowed to look at? That’s dumb. Rules are dumb. Decorum is dumb. And both are especially dumb wherever it concerns the NCAA.

I don’t care what Louisville does with its banner, to be honest. They can use it as the welcome mat to the Rick Pitino memorial in its own Les Invalides for everything it lost. I’m just here for Trey Burke. He deserves so much better. The block was good, damn it.