Sports Illustrated offers some commentary on the SUNY Binghamton fiasco (details here):
… [T]he lessons of Binghamton, a state school 140 miles northwest of New York City, were no shock to college basketball insiders.
“What’s happened there really should come as no surprise to anyone that was in the league or following that league,” former Boston University coach Dennis Wolff said. “They were making a recipe for disaster by the way they were going about their business.”
… “The concept of giving kids transferring in (a scholarship), I don’t think anyone’s against that,” Wolff said. “But the idea that almost every guy that came in had been asked to leave where they had been before, that puts it in a different light in my mind.”
… “The problem with Binghamton was simply that the course that they chose, they were under suspicion from the beginning,” [another observer] said. “People said, ‘Whoa, whoa, this guy’s been at three schools. This guy’s been at four schools. … What price glory here?”…
The lessons of Binghamton will not get learned. Universities have spun off their sports programs — they throw lots of money at them but avert their eyes. Who wouldn’t. It’s sordid over there.
Somebody hires a coach who recruits criminals, and the shit hits the fan as anyone not averting her eyes could predict.
Simple matter of negligence. We pay university presidents a lot, but most of them don’t know anything about what’s going on in the big campus sports, and they don’t want to know.
That’s how you get drunkard coaches, coaches who beat up their assistant coaches, coaches who recruit criminals. Every one of these coaches costs an American university between a million and four million dollars a year. Their contracts make it close to impossible to fire them without costing the school many more millions.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:26PM
> We pay university presidents a lot
I’m sure you saw this one yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/education/02college.html