The suspension would have been announced a couple of months ago though. The 9 games next year are the punishment for Sidney's attorney being such an ***.
The NCAA decided long ago someone had to pay the price for all the AAU ******** and arbitrarily decided Sidney was going to be the one to pay that price. It didn't matter who was representing him. See the money quote I posted above.
We could have had Johnnie Cochran's corpse as the lawyer and we still would have gotten the punishment. The only thing that would have let Sidney play this year is if he transferred to Kentucky, Florida, Notre Dame, etc.