The University of Alabama is having a bad day.

Sixteen athletics teams at Alabama have been penalized for their involvement in improperly obtaining free textbooks for other students, with the football team ordered to vacate an unspecified number of victories between the 2005 and 2007 seasons, the NCAA Committee on Infractions announced Thursday.

Alabama could be forced to vacate as many as 21 football wins that came under the watch of former coach Mike Shula and current coach Nick Saban, sources at the university told ESPN.com’s Mark Schlabach. Citing a source, the Birmingham News reported the number of victories to be at least 10.

The football program, which will not lose future scholarships, and the other 15 teams have been put on three years’ probation — the third probation penalty for university athletics in the last decade. Alabama also was ordered to pay a $43,900 fine.

In addition to football, the programs receiving penalties are men’s and women’s basketball, softball, baseball, women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s swimming, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s track and field, women’s soccer and women’s volleyball.

In men’s tennis and men’s and women’s track, the individual records of 15 athletes identified as “intentional wrongdoers” will be vacated and team point totals from regular season, postseason and NCAA championship contests will be reconfigured, the NCAA said.

Alabama went 10-2 in 2005, 6-7 in 2006 and 7-6 in 2007. So in the grand scheme of things, if they do have to give back those victories, it wouldn’t have much of an affect on the outcome of those seasons for other teams. But could you imagine if the Tide would have won one of those mythical titles that the BCS tries to pass off as a national championship in 2005, 2006 or 2007? Boy, Alabama’s face would have been red!

On a side note, textbooks in college should be free anyway. That’s one of the biggest scams universities run on students every year. First, you’re going to pay us $12,000 a year just to attend our school. Then we’re going to charge you another $500 to $1,000 for textbooks and when you sell them back to us, we’re only going to give you $21.84 for your trade in.

Have a nice day.