Post by milkovich on Jan 13, 2009 15:12:17 GMT -5
I was reluctant to post here, primarily because I’m sure it will be misconstrued – same as Sunday’s column was -- in some precincts as an attempt to curry favor with those who’ve chosen to label me as some kind of irredeemable turncoat for the column in question, written six years ago during the darkest moment of the VBK/Wick debacle. I also don’t think it’s terribly productive to go back and pick at old scabs.
But I do feel compelled to address what I honestly believe has been a wild mischaracterization of the column I wrote, and while I don’t presume to speak on behalf of Adrian, I do feel comfortable saying that the two of us each wrote what we wrote based on the same principle: that it was the bums entrusted with St. Bonaventure – Wickenheiser and VBK – that received our slings and arrows, and not the school itself. If anything, the column I wrote in 2003 – which I have included at the end of this post, simply for the purposes of re-clarification – was written with even greater and deeper affection than the one I wrote last week, because I was weeping for what had become of my school then, entrusted in sinister hands. And, frankly, I felt it was imperative to put whatever small pressures I could to make sure the right thing was done.
A couple of things to remember:
• The scandal broke on Feb. 27, at which point Wickenheiser was unreachable and out of town, and VBK locked himself in his office. It was March 2 when the forfeits were announced. It was March 4 when the players decided not to play the rest of the season – which, I maintained and still do, was the worst transgression of all, because it was unprecedented and because it showed that all leadership had been abdicated. The President and Coach should have been terminated – or at least suspended – that second.
• Adrian and I both wrote our columns on March 5, at which point NOTHING had yet happened to VBK or Wick and – most important to remember – there was still a prevailing sense that both could actually survive the whole mess.
• Wickenheiser was finally forced out, reluctantly and under pressure, on March 10.
• It wasn’t until April 17 that VBK was finally fired.
For the record, the ring went back on my finger on April 18.
Now, I am neither self-important nor self-aggrandizing enough to believe that writing what I wrote caused the proper course of action here. But I am also not naïve enough to minimize that writing what I wrote in an influential sports section had zero impact, either. There are some who say Adrian and I “turned our backs” on the school, that we “threw it under the bus,” that we should have used our positions to put a happy face and a positive spin on what happened. But in our careers, between us, we have covered and criticized crooked programs or significant corruptions at Arkansas, Fresno State, Kansas State, St. John’s, Fordham and UConn, to name a few; to have then turned a blind eye to our own backyard would not only have been wrong, it would have betrayed every journalistic principle we ever learned at the journalism school at St. Bonaventure.
Again, if you want to take issue with any of that, that’s your right. If you think – as some have speculated – that we did this to “get ahead in our careers,” well, I’m sorry, that’s ludicrous. If you still feel any of that after re-reading this column, you are certainly entitled to that opinion, too. I happen to think this still reads as a stinging indictment of the wretched duo who tried mightily to destroy the university, and not the university itself. A lot of time has passed, a lot of healing, but we really should never, ever forget what VBK and Wick did to us, to our school, and to our faith in that school – and how much Sister Margaret and Mark Schmidt – and Anthony Solomon, too, for that matter – did to bring us back to where we are right now. Thanks for taking the time to read.
Mike Vaccaro
Class of 1989
BONAVENTURE DEBACLE REALLY HITTING HOME
Mike Vaccaro
623 words
6 March 2003
New York Post
62
English
Copyright (c) 2003, N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
THIS is the kind of story that always supplies a smug and self-satisfied smile. Nothing hits the spot quite like a steaming mug of campus hypocrisy, and how can you resist these details:
A pom-pom waving school president, greasing the eligibility for a 6-9 shot blocker who'd arrived for classes with a welding certificate in his pocket instead of an associate's degree. A coach who insists he has no idea what distinguishes an eligible player from an ineligible one. Forfeits by the truckload, probation around the corner. And the first known example of college players simply walking away from the final two games of a season in protest (who says college sports are immune from strikes?)
d**n. You can practically fall out of your chair laughing at all of that.
Except it isn't at all funny, not even a little bit, if you happen to have a diploma from St. Bonaventure University, where all of that low comedy has filled the chilled Western New York winter, hanging on your wall. It isn't terribly amusing if, like me, you've proudly worn your loyalty to dear alma mater in your heart and a class ring on your finger for 14 years.
That's when the laughs stop. That's when you realize it isn't only the jock factories that can make headlines with buffoonish administrators, cartoonish coaches and pockets stuffed with misbehavior. Sometimes, when you're not looking, it can reach into your backyard, into your home.
Into your heart.
It's funny. Around here, we've spent so much of this college basketball season tracking dueling coaching sagas, Bob Hill's at Fordham, Mike Jarvis' at St. John's. Jarvis' Red Storm have struggled through this Big East season, Hill's Rams have won four games (two of them, appropriately, courtesy of St. Bonaventure forfeits).
You'd better believe I've weighed in on both of those situations, the same way an army of alums have, because there is nothing more fascinating to a college fan than the coach's day-to-day job security.
Well, I'm here to tell you: be grateful when all you have to complain about is a lousy team enduring a lousy season.
Be glad your school wasn't visited by the likes of Robert J. Wickenheiser, the St. Bonaventure president, who personally saw to it that Jamil Terrell would be allowed to play for the Bonnies this year, splintering the school's mostly pristine 84-year basketball reputation by committing nothing short of academic fraud. Be grateful Jan van Breda Kolff, the dyspeptic, disagreeable coach who put Wickenheiser up to this folly, is nowhere near your school's coaching offices.
Mostly, be happy that however miserably your team may be playing, however lacking the players might be, they show up to play their games as scheduled; last night, UMass beat the Bonnies by the forfeit-mandated score of 2-0. Dayton will do the same this Saturday.
Because that means you don't know what it is to be a laughingstock, a national punchline, the way my school is right now. It means you can hope a coach gets fired because of something silly like losing ballgames, instead of compromising the school's very viability as a university, the way my coach has, with the blessing of his boss.
Mostly, it means you can keep your class ring on your finger, instead of locked away in a drawer, which is where mine is right now. And will stay for a good, long time, until the jokers who brought shame to the place are dismissed forever.
-30-
But I do feel compelled to address what I honestly believe has been a wild mischaracterization of the column I wrote, and while I don’t presume to speak on behalf of Adrian, I do feel comfortable saying that the two of us each wrote what we wrote based on the same principle: that it was the bums entrusted with St. Bonaventure – Wickenheiser and VBK – that received our slings and arrows, and not the school itself. If anything, the column I wrote in 2003 – which I have included at the end of this post, simply for the purposes of re-clarification – was written with even greater and deeper affection than the one I wrote last week, because I was weeping for what had become of my school then, entrusted in sinister hands. And, frankly, I felt it was imperative to put whatever small pressures I could to make sure the right thing was done.
A couple of things to remember:
• The scandal broke on Feb. 27, at which point Wickenheiser was unreachable and out of town, and VBK locked himself in his office. It was March 2 when the forfeits were announced. It was March 4 when the players decided not to play the rest of the season – which, I maintained and still do, was the worst transgression of all, because it was unprecedented and because it showed that all leadership had been abdicated. The President and Coach should have been terminated – or at least suspended – that second.
• Adrian and I both wrote our columns on March 5, at which point NOTHING had yet happened to VBK or Wick and – most important to remember – there was still a prevailing sense that both could actually survive the whole mess.
• Wickenheiser was finally forced out, reluctantly and under pressure, on March 10.
• It wasn’t until April 17 that VBK was finally fired.
For the record, the ring went back on my finger on April 18.
Now, I am neither self-important nor self-aggrandizing enough to believe that writing what I wrote caused the proper course of action here. But I am also not naïve enough to minimize that writing what I wrote in an influential sports section had zero impact, either. There are some who say Adrian and I “turned our backs” on the school, that we “threw it under the bus,” that we should have used our positions to put a happy face and a positive spin on what happened. But in our careers, between us, we have covered and criticized crooked programs or significant corruptions at Arkansas, Fresno State, Kansas State, St. John’s, Fordham and UConn, to name a few; to have then turned a blind eye to our own backyard would not only have been wrong, it would have betrayed every journalistic principle we ever learned at the journalism school at St. Bonaventure.
Again, if you want to take issue with any of that, that’s your right. If you think – as some have speculated – that we did this to “get ahead in our careers,” well, I’m sorry, that’s ludicrous. If you still feel any of that after re-reading this column, you are certainly entitled to that opinion, too. I happen to think this still reads as a stinging indictment of the wretched duo who tried mightily to destroy the university, and not the university itself. A lot of time has passed, a lot of healing, but we really should never, ever forget what VBK and Wick did to us, to our school, and to our faith in that school – and how much Sister Margaret and Mark Schmidt – and Anthony Solomon, too, for that matter – did to bring us back to where we are right now. Thanks for taking the time to read.
Mike Vaccaro
Class of 1989
BONAVENTURE DEBACLE REALLY HITTING HOME
Mike Vaccaro
623 words
6 March 2003
New York Post
62
English
Copyright (c) 2003, N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
THIS is the kind of story that always supplies a smug and self-satisfied smile. Nothing hits the spot quite like a steaming mug of campus hypocrisy, and how can you resist these details:
A pom-pom waving school president, greasing the eligibility for a 6-9 shot blocker who'd arrived for classes with a welding certificate in his pocket instead of an associate's degree. A coach who insists he has no idea what distinguishes an eligible player from an ineligible one. Forfeits by the truckload, probation around the corner. And the first known example of college players simply walking away from the final two games of a season in protest (who says college sports are immune from strikes?)
d**n. You can practically fall out of your chair laughing at all of that.
Except it isn't at all funny, not even a little bit, if you happen to have a diploma from St. Bonaventure University, where all of that low comedy has filled the chilled Western New York winter, hanging on your wall. It isn't terribly amusing if, like me, you've proudly worn your loyalty to dear alma mater in your heart and a class ring on your finger for 14 years.
That's when the laughs stop. That's when you realize it isn't only the jock factories that can make headlines with buffoonish administrators, cartoonish coaches and pockets stuffed with misbehavior. Sometimes, when you're not looking, it can reach into your backyard, into your home.
Into your heart.
It's funny. Around here, we've spent so much of this college basketball season tracking dueling coaching sagas, Bob Hill's at Fordham, Mike Jarvis' at St. John's. Jarvis' Red Storm have struggled through this Big East season, Hill's Rams have won four games (two of them, appropriately, courtesy of St. Bonaventure forfeits).
You'd better believe I've weighed in on both of those situations, the same way an army of alums have, because there is nothing more fascinating to a college fan than the coach's day-to-day job security.
Well, I'm here to tell you: be grateful when all you have to complain about is a lousy team enduring a lousy season.
Be glad your school wasn't visited by the likes of Robert J. Wickenheiser, the St. Bonaventure president, who personally saw to it that Jamil Terrell would be allowed to play for the Bonnies this year, splintering the school's mostly pristine 84-year basketball reputation by committing nothing short of academic fraud. Be grateful Jan van Breda Kolff, the dyspeptic, disagreeable coach who put Wickenheiser up to this folly, is nowhere near your school's coaching offices.
Mostly, be happy that however miserably your team may be playing, however lacking the players might be, they show up to play their games as scheduled; last night, UMass beat the Bonnies by the forfeit-mandated score of 2-0. Dayton will do the same this Saturday.
Because that means you don't know what it is to be a laughingstock, a national punchline, the way my school is right now. It means you can hope a coach gets fired because of something silly like losing ballgames, instead of compromising the school's very viability as a university, the way my coach has, with the blessing of his boss.
Mostly, it means you can keep your class ring on your finger, instead of locked away in a drawer, which is where mine is right now. And will stay for a good, long time, until the jokers who brought shame to the place are dismissed forever.
-30-
