The Ann Arbor News, a paper with a modest circulation of 50,000, published an ambitious, four-part series this week detailing the dirty administrative tricks that the University of Michigan used to keep its athletes eligible and functioning. A refreshing piece of reporting, the series has since endured the wrath of dozens of angry Wolverine lifers, excusing the inexcusable.
Fans, it seems, are rarely willing to believe that their beloved alma mater doesn't run its athletics programs without cutting some serious corners.
But that pervasive, everyone-does-it mentality shouldn't mean that we stop asking the hard questions when a program comes under scrutiny. Even if it's Harvard.
Especially if it's Harvard.
And especially now: since the New York Times publicly aired other coaches' complaints about its recruiting tactics on March 2, it's been Harvard.
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When asked about the middling state of the Crimson's basketball program last year, Penn associate athletics director Mary DiStanislao confirmed the obvious to a colleague of mine.
"Harvard is Harvard," she said. "It has its own name recognition different from Penn, which has a distinct character as a basketball school."
By the time it let go of Frank Sullivan, though, Harvard had already decided it didn't want to be Harvard when it came to basketball, at least not the mediocre version with which we had become familiar. So they found a big name, the biggest name they could have hoped for, to rebrand it.
True, Tommy Amaker may not have won enough at Michigan, but how many other Ivy League coaches have led a team to the Sweet Sixteen? (Answer: none.)
But there was always a lingering doubt that Amaker could learn quickly to recruit the Ivy League way, which means selling students on a degree received after college, instead of a scholarship during it.
Penn, by contrast, got the ultimate Ivy League insider in Glen Miller, the only hoops coach since 1946 to move from one Ivy head coaching job to another.
Now, with Amaker's short tenure in Cambridge coming under Ivy League and potential NCAA scrutiny already, it is reasonable to ask whether or not trying to do so much so quickly was the right choice.
And it is vital and necessary that no one lets Harvard off the hook, or that it becomes yet another head-in-the-sand apologist.
Ivy League executive director Jeff Orleans has only said that the conference will "do what needs to be done."
Whatever that is, the findings should be made public, and Amaker and Harvard athletics director Bob Scalise should address the concerns that Ivy fans and coaches have doubtless entertained.
Whether Amaker's misdeeds merely required a "teaching moment," as Scalise claimed or (more likely) were serious, they are public now and require some sort of closure. And Harvard would do well to clarify the issue, too; it has everything to lose when it comes to public relations.
Regardless of how those semantics play out, we - fans, writers, the Ivy League and the NCAA - shouldn't become distracted from the inherent fishiness of this mess.
Something tells me that Miller didn't get any more leeway with the admissions office than his Quakers predecessor, Fran Dunphy, did. Miller's sin? Unlike Amaker, who took the step down from Michigan to Harvard and has gotten gift after gift since, Miller took a step up, inheriting a program where winning was the norm. His job was tough enough before Amaker got more recruiting ammunition.
Now, he and the other six Ivy League coaches have a vested interest in seeing this mess through, and they deserve that much.
Andrew Scurria is a junior International Relations major from Wilmington, Del., and is a former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@dailypennsylvanian.com.
