It’s been a rough week for the Atlantic 10.
Monday, the league was forced to impose sanctions on St. Bonaventure after the NCAA ruled the Bonnies had been using an ineligible player for most of the season. Later that evening, Rhode Island announced it was investigating allegations that former coach Jim Harrick, Sr.’s staff and boosters gave players money and had their grades changed. And Tuesday, St. Bonaventure declared it would not play its two remaining games this season.
But neither the Bonnies nor Jim Harrick caused the worst part of the week. The presidents of the league’s 12 universities did, and A-10 Commissioner Linda Bruno let it happen.
In a senseless move, the presidents, including GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, decided not only to ban St. Bonaventure from this year’s A-10 Tournament but also to alter the entire league standings a week before the tournament.
Declaring the Bonnies ineligible for the A-10 Championship was an appropriate measure by the presidents and St. Bonaventure’s decision to forfeit the games it won with the ineligible player, junior Jamil Terrell, was a respectable move. But the decision to make the forfeits effective immediately in a way that dealt most A-10 teams a new postseason hand makes about as much sense as calling a conference with 12 teams the Atlantic 10.
First and foremost, the decision automatically takes away GW’s chances of playing at home in the first round of the A-10 Tournament by awarding La Salle a win for the game it lost to the Bonnies and not doing so for the Colonials. That’s a substantial blow to the postseason chances of a team that has yet to win a conference road game this year.
And for what? Because La Salle happened to have the Bonnies on their schedule in January and GW played them the day after people started asking about Terrell? La Salle lost its game to St. Bonavanture by 10 points and GW lost by five in an overtime thriller. Terrell was averaging seven points in 23 minutes per game. Can anyone honestly say he had enough of an impact that a team like La Salle should earn an automatic first-round home game?
And it’s not just La Salle and GW. Monday’s decision gives an automatic first-round bye to Richmond, could potentially take one away from Temple, and affects just about every team’s standings and/or tournament seeding.
That is flat out wrong. Punishing St. Bonaventure is a good thing. Punishing or awarding every other team in the A-10 for something they had no control over is just unfair. When in doubt, it is better to let tainted results stand than to give every team St. Bonaventure beat with Terrell in uniform a bump up in the standings, because no one can say conclusively that the results would have been different had Terrell not played.
One would think GW’s own president would have taken that into account, but Trachtenberg opted to vote in favor of the measure that Athletic Director Jack Kvancz accurately said “screwed” the Colonials.
Trachtenberg argued the sanctions imposed on St. Bonaventure would benefit GW and all A-10 schools in the long run by protecting the integrity and reputation of the conference, and he is absolutely right in giving that due priority. But it could have been done without hurting GW and the other schools that it did.
The way to do it is to make the Bonnies ineligible for the A-10 Championship and change the standings after the season is over. St. Bonaventure forfeits the games it won with Terrell and its opponents get credited for the wins, but the seeding for the tournament remains the same, except for the obvious removal of St. Bonaventure from contention and subsequent additional bye awarded.
That doesn’t seem all that complicated of a solution, and the fact that 12 of the smartest people in higher education couldn’t do it shows they are clearly too far removed from college athletics to be making these decisions.
This brings into question the leadership of Commissioner Bruno, who put the decision in the hands of the presidents. The trend in college athletics in the last decade has been to put decisions like these increasingly closer to university presidents and away from athletic directors, who some fear aren’t as concerned with issues like academics and integrity. Good idea in theory, bad idea in practice, at least as far as this week is concerned. All indications are that St. Bonaventure President Robert J. Wickenheiser was the main culprit in Terrell’s case, and clearly the 11 other presidents in the A-10 offered no great insight on what to do.
Bruno never should have handed the decision to the presidents and the presidents should never have screwed up the standings the way they did.
As for the shameful and unprecedented decision of the university that caused this whole mess not to make its players show up for their remaining two games against Massachusetts and Dayton, there is nothing the league can do right now but to credit those two opponents with the wins.
The Bonnies essentially said, “Screw the A-10. We’re not playing any more games,” to which the conference should respond, “That’s right. You’re not,” by kicking them out of the league at the end of the season.
