The NCAA is going to rewrite the record books and potentially vacate a maximum of 74 wins from the Wichita State men’s baseball team due to sanctions.

A Missouri Valley tournament championship and the ineligible players’ individual statistics will also be vacated. Which raises the question: is baseball a team sport or not? This is something I would like to ask the NCAA.

Late last month, the NCAA issued a one-year probation, a $5,000 fine and vacated all of the wins in which the ineligible players on the WSU baseball team participated in while ineligible — essentially wins from the 2012 and 2013 seasons.

Why were the players ineligible?

In November of 2013, coach Todd Butler discovered 21 players were receiving discounts, as much as 50 percent, on Under Armour apparel and non-athletic gear through an account that was administered by former baseball administrative assistant Shelley Wombacher. The problem wasn’t the athletes purchasing Under Armour gear — according to NCAA rules, athletes are allowed to purchase items related to their sport.

However, those athletes decided to purchase hunting gear and other non-baseball clothing, which made them ineligible under NCAA guidelines. Eight of the players who purchased items less than $100 worth of clothing reportedly paid back the money.

OK, cool. That’s the honorable thing to do.

Now it’s time for the NCAA to do the honorable thing — for once — and not vacate wins, but dismiss all individual statistics from the players that were ruled ineligible.

Those wins were team wins. The fact that athletes knowingly or unknowingly purchased non-baseball gear, having no direct effect on player performance, such as steroid use, should justify my reasoning for leaving the team wins alone.

It’s unfair and sends the wrong message to college athletes. If you take away team wins for individual acts that clearly did not provide any kind of unfair advantage to either team, then the NCAA is essentially saying the individual is and will always be above the team.

University President John Bardo seems to agree.

Bardo said in a statement last Thursday that he agrees that the punishment set by the NCAA for infractions are appropriate. However, Bardo said the university would appeal the sanctions in regards to vacated wins. Which, I believe, is the right course of action for WSU to take.

 “The student-athletes involved acted without guilty knowledge,” Bardo said. “It seems unfair to permanently tarnish the records they achieved as a team.”

Regardless of what mistakes each individual person has made, none of those mistakes impacted the game of baseball or caused an unbalanced momentum swing. So why take away team wins?

This is a question I would like the NCAA to answer.