Finally, the dust is settling on North Broad Street and on City Avenue. Temple coach John Chaney will not coach the Owls for the remainder of the regular season nor through next week's Atlantic 10 conference tournament in Cincinnati. Saint Joseph's senior forward John Bryant will watch the rest of his team's season from the bench with a broken arm. SJU president Timothy J. Lannon has accepted Chaney's written apology, after the coach met with Bryant's family.
So now, finally, we can move on, and focus on basketball games instead of press releases and possible lawsuits.
And maybe, once everything settles down, people will realize that Chaney was judged a bit more harshly than he should have been.
I don't mean to condone in any way what happened. I feel as bad as everyone else does for John Bryant, a stellar interior player and a big reason why the Hawks -- who are usually at a size disadvantage against the Owls --haven't lost to Temple since Bryant's senior year of high school.
I also feel bad for Nehemiah Ingram, who was simply following his coach's orders when he was sent into the game to rough-up SJU players because Chaney felt they were setting illegal screens. Ingram has since had to suffer through being called a "goon" by Chaney. I certainly would not want to be Ingram's parents right now.
In English soccer, as well as other sports around the world, one can be charged with "bringing the game into disrepute" for excessively abusing referees or playing dirty. Chaney is guilty of a similar offense, one which American sports would do well to adopt.
He should have been suspended through the Atlantic 10 Tournament from the outset, as he now has been, although if Bryant had not been injured as badly, I think suspending him only for the rest of the regular season would have been fair.
But to place all of the blame for this on Chaney is pushing this far more over the top than it should go.
First, referees Jim Burr and Karl Hess had a significant role to play in the incidents. Why weren't any of Ingram's fouls called flagrant? And why, if everybody knew that this was going to happen coming in, was Chaney not assessed a technical foul for his actions?
If either of those things had happened, Bryant would more than likely still be healthy. Remember, the foul on which he broke his arm was Ingram's fifth and final of the game.
What worries me more, though, is the firestorm that the media created once word got out that Bryant was hurt.
ESPN ran hard with the story, and seemingly every coach and former player the network employs as a pundit had his say. Many big newspapers had columns, from the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune.
And from all this sound and fury, a pattern emerged. The people with the closest connections to Chaney were the ones most likely to defend him.
That isn't surprising at all, but I can't help wondering whether one's experience with college basketball in Philadelphia also is some indication of how much standing one has to pass judgement on all of this.
In the Washington Post, Mike Wise called for John Chaney's resignation and criticized the often rough nature of Big 5 basketball.
ESPN.com columnist Pat Forde would "tell John Chaney we'll see him in October 2005. At the earliest."
On the other side, Memphis coach John Calipari has been one of Chaney's staunchest defenders over the last week. Yes, the same John Calipari that Chaney threatened to kill in 1994.
Former Georgetown head coach John Thompson told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he faulted what is probably Chaney's single greatest strength.
"The mistake John Chaney made was articulating it to people outside of that forum, subjecting it to public interpretation," Thompson said. "Any coach who tells you he's never told a player to go in a game and put somebody on his [backside] is a damn liar. I didn't say most coaches. I said any coach."
When placed in a difficult situation, have you ever been more honest about something than you wanted to be or should have been? Have you ever gotten really passionate in an argument about something and gone on ranting for a really long time?
I bet you have.
And if so, don't be the first to criticize John Chaney.
For me, 23 years of incredibly hard work to improve the lives of young African-American men far outweighs the few incidents over that span in which Chaney's passion got the better of him.
And anybody who has ever attended one of his press conferences -- events which sometimes justify admission fees more so than Temple games do -- has seen the man at his wisecracking best, leaving rooms full of professional cynics doubled over in laughter.
I believe Chaney when he says that he didn't want anybody to get hurt. It doesn't make his tactics right, and I understand why someone would choose not to believe Chaney's contrition over the last few days.
But to borrow a phrase from the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, Chaney should be judged on the entire body of work over his great coaching career. Even if the most recent games leave the strongest impressions.
Jonathan Tannenwald is a junior Urban Studies major from Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is jtannenw@sas.upenn.edu.
