The America East Conference is usually not associated with the pageantry and lore of March Madness, a reality even the most ardent enthusiasts of the league accept. The highest aspiration an America East basketball team can usually hope for is being run out of the gym in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. This year, however, has been a bit of an exception. While BU students were enjoying a week off, the conference found itself in the national sports discussion, but not necessarily for the right reasons.
It began with the ongoing controversy surrounding the men’s basketball team at Binghamton University. Since becoming a Division I program in 2001, the Binghamton administration has fervently attempted to elevate the status of its basketball program. Although this sounds like a noble effort, its methods for achieving this collective goal have been called into question.
Since the hiring of head coach Kevin Broadus in 2007, numerous players with dubious backgrounds have been brought onto the Bearcat roster, and a remarkably high percentage of players on the team have been well-traveled, to say the least. A number of key players are transfers from other colleges who had to switch schools for academic or conduct-based reasons. Others used the junior college route to find their way to upstate New York, a practice that is not a violation of NCAA rules, but is usually taken with a grain of salt, especially in a conference like America East.
The problems for Binghamton don’t end with their players’ backgrounds. The academic merits of several players have been criticized by teachers and administrators, and a number of off-court issues have arisen. The most publicized of them occurred when junior guard Malik Alvin stole condoms from a local Wal-Mart and assaulted a 66 year-old woman in the process, even though the university offers free condoms to its students.
This series of events has set off condemnation from other schools in the conference and from people within Binghamton itself. The pursuit of fielding a competitive basketball team is certainly a process, and at some point an athletic department has to decide how it will carry out this procedure. Ideally, a school should be able to have a successful basketball team loaded with student-athletes of high standards both on and off the court, but more often than not, it doesn’t happen that way. Corners sometimes get cut, and it has become very apparent this is the approach Binghamton has taken.
Broadus was a former assistant at Georgetown, a program that’s famous for bringing in troubled players and giving them a shot at redemption (see Iverson, Allen), and it looks like Broadus is trying a similar strategy at Binghamton. I’m all for giving second chances, but there has to come a point where a coach or AD sits a player down and tells them, ‘You know, you just can’t do that’ ‘-‘- a genuine attempt to rectify their personal character, rather than turning a blind eye to their problems as long as the team succeeds. What has happened at Binghamton under Broadus’ tenure really resembles Jerry Tarkanian more than it does John Thompson.
In an effort to protest Binghamton’s actions, the America East coaches decided to ‘send a message’ by snubbing D.J. Rivera of Player of the Year and First Team All-Conference honors. By doing this, the coaches not only acted in a petulant and petty manner that you would expect from a pre-pubescent teen rather than a grown man, but they made a scapegoat of an individual who had little to no involvement in the situation at hand.
D.J. Rivera didn’t allow all these problems at Binghamton to persist. He wasn’t the one that built a team and program around a group of problematic student(?)-athletes. All he did was go out on the court and do his job, which was to put up points and win games for his team. And judging by the results, he did pretty darn well.
If a clear and effective message was what the conference brain-trust wanted to send, then why on Earth did they conspire against a player rather than someone who is higher up and actually accountable for the infractions at Binghamton? One of those people would be Kevin Broadus, your 2008-09 America East Coach of the Year, as voted on by the coaches themselves. Well done, gentlemen.
These changes in the conference hit home last week when BU coach Dennis Wolff was fired after 15 seasons on the job. Although I agree with Mike Lynch’s decision that the program needed to move in a different direction, the timing seems a little iffy. Amidst budget cuts, hiring and project freezes as well as widespread layoffs at the university, is it wise to be buying out Wolff’s contract of up to $1.4 million while paying the next coach’s salary on top of that?
I think the firing is a determination that shows a heightened commitment to the men’s basketball program and a vision toward the future, but at what expense (literally)?
Like the wave of change that has swept across our country over this past year, the America East is transforming as well, at least in basketball. What has traditionally been a conference of smaller-tier, academically focused schools is now setting its sights toward greater stakes. The league is experiencing a change of culture, with greater emphasis placed on not only winning, but doing so immediately.
As a Terrier fan, I can only hope that one day BU will be competing in a hotly contested conference that is actually relevant in the national consciousness, but yet some skepticism remains. Big-time Division I college basketball is a wonderful asset to a university, but if integrity, fairness and morals have to be compromised to attain it, I won’t lose any sleep being a 16-seed come time for the Big Dance.
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