MEYER: The “No Assumptions Era”

This past Wednesday, the president of the NCAA, Myles Brand, passed away after a trying eight-month bout with pancreatic cancer. While Brand may be best known for firing Bobby Knight while he was the president at Indiana University, he leaves behind a unique legacy.

He took over an institution that at the time was routinely criticized for not placing enough value on education and academics. Brand was a very polarizing figure to a majority of people, but many of those same people at least recognize the fact that Brand made it a priority during his tenure to demonstrate that academic diligence and social morality are still fundamental to the nature of college athletics.

Despite his best efforts in his seven years as president, college sports are still a far cry from the vision Brand had for the NCAA and its individual members. This isn’t to say that he failed in his leadership role, but it comes down to the fact that he may have been chasing an impossible dream: bringing college sports back to a more innocent time, a time when major programs across the country weren’t poisoned by many of the afflictions that come from increased exposure and revenue.

A good portion of what’s wrong with college athletics has been routinely exposed even as recently as this year. This summer, the University of Memphis basketball program was found to have used an ineligible player (Derrick Rose) who had a stand-in take the SATs for him. For these violations, the school was forced to vacate its appearance in the 2008 Final Four.

Not too long ago, the NCAA ruled that the Florida State football program had to vacate 14 victories in midst of a cheating scandal involving several Seminoles football players and an online music history test.

One of college basketball’s all-time great coaches, Rick Pitino, is currently at the center of a bizarre extortion case and has admitted to having had sex with the woman who was trying to blackmail him. Pitino further embarrassed himself in a press conference last month in which he used his brother-in-law’s death in the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an excuse for his lapse in judgment. Classy.

There are obviously more examples than the ones I just listed, but the point is college sports have drifted away from an age when schools and programs played by the rules, and even further away from the seemingly distant era when student athletes went to college to be the former and not the latter part of the term.’

So exactly how does all of this apply to BU?

As virtually everyone here knows, BU isn’t exactly what would be called an ‘athletic powerhouse,’ a title reserved for places like Michigan and Texas that come complete with palatial football stadiums and over-flowing athletic coffers.

Our school is a place blessed with a storied hockey program, some great minor sports teams, and is respectable all around, all under the guidance of an athletic director who, in all honesty, we’re lucky to have not lost yet to a better job at a bigger school.

In the grand scheme of things, there’s a sizable gap between us and many of the other schools I’ve mentioned thus far.

We’re all aware that college athletics has its fair share of problems, but it’s often the case that these thoughts and discussions end with the UNLVs and USCs of the world.’ Particularly at schools like BU, we all like to think that these things happen in far off places, kind of like the old ‘not in my backyard’ adage.

However, with that being said, BU Athletics are not immune to many of the same ills that have plagued college sports, and to assume otherwise is not only irresponsible, but it sets you up for some potentially grim, earth-shattering realizations.

Some people will point to the fact that we’re a hockey school and most of these NCAA violations happen with football and basketball. Tell that to the University of New Hampshire men’s hockey program, a fellow Hockey East member, who just this summer was put on two years’ probation for 923 ‘impermissible emails’ to recruits.

Others will take solace in the fact that BU is in a low-major conference and doesn’t have a fraction of the athletic budget that many top-tier Division-I athletic departments do, so thus this isn’t a fostering environment to the circumvention of NCAA rules. For this one, you don’t have to look further than across the Charles to Harvard, whose basketball program faced allegations of improper recruiting practices a couple of years ago. Yes, you read that correctly, Harvard.

What about schools like Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Alabama State, Texas State-San Marcos, and many other ‘small time’ athletic departments who have earned the ire of the NCAA in recent years?

Making assumptions or just trying to act like these sorts of occurrences could never happen to your beloved team or school is quite simply a dangerous stance to take.

Let’s look at Red Sox fans, for who the longest time bragged that their team not only won, but did so without any players accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, an unfortunate presence in the game of baseball in the same way NCAA violations are in collegiate sports. Then all of a sudden, it’s revealed that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for these PEDs, leaving behind a fan base that was not only blindsided, but one that now comes off as hypocritical, cheering on Ortiz while wearing shirts that say ‘A-Roid’ on them.

The discussion of how college sports aren’t what they used to be is an oft-repeated one, almost to the point of being clich’eacute;, but it’s not without merit.

The modern college athletic landscape has become infested with the likes of overzealous AAU coaches, ill-intentioned boosters, tampering emails and texts, and almost anything in between.’ It’s a different world that works under a different set of rules, and denying it as much as you may please does not change the fact that these seedy elements exist and a place like BU is just as likely to be burdened by them as any other school in the country.

This current state is unfair to so many people here, from Mike Lynch to Jack Parker to Neil Roberts to Kelly Greenberg to Robyne Johnson and to the many others involved with BU Athletics who have never committed any major NCAA recruiting violations.

But in a world where standardized test fraud, improper benefits and embarrassing scandal litter the front page of the sports section, the public sees you as guilty until proven innocent, and even at a school like BU, a sports fan can never assume a single thing.