After the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team decided not to play its final two games of the season it has been excoriated in the sport’s press and the Atlantic 10 is talking about whether or not to drop the team from its league. But in the face of the absurdity that is the NCAA, is what St. Bonaventure’s team decided to do all that bizarre?
The team’s problems started with when junior college transfer Jamil Terrell joined the St. Bonaventure team last April. Terrell was ineligible and St. Bonaventure’s compliance officer warned the basketball coach at the time, but the coach went to the university president who overruled the compliance officer and allowed Terrell to join the team.
He played in 25 games and when the Atlantic-10 athletic directors finally declared him ineligible a few weeks ago, they forced St. Bonaventure to not only forfeit 6 of their games, but banned the team from the Atlantic-10 postseason tournament. The team said thanks, but no thanks, and decided not to play its final two games.
This brought outrage from commentators whining about the team being quitters who disgraced their sport and league. Give me a break — NCAA men’s basketball has so disgraced itself at the coaching and administrative level, that it’s hard to believe St. Bonaventure’s basketball team created even a ripple.
This is an organization, after all, where Bobby Knight can be caught on tape choking a player during practice, and he is free to coach at any school that will have him. Terrell gets a welding certificate rather than an actual degree, however, and the Atlantic-10 issues it the basketball equivalent of the death penalty. Coaches like Jerry Tarkanian can violation hop from one university to another leaving ineligible players in their wake while raking in the financial rewards for themselves.
This is an industry in which the median salary for men’s NCAA basketball coaches is $290,000 but everyone freaks out when some kid wants a booster to cover his $300 phone bill.
The only academic mission the NCAA has left is serving up a hefty portion of Hypocrisy 101.