Subject #1: I think that since a coach is in charge of a basketball program and Final Fours and national championships are won with talent, how good a recruiter a coach is should be part of the equation. How well he coaches different or lesser talented teams are part of it as well. You can't dismiss any of it.
Subject #2: I don't want this thread hijacked with an argument about our two probations but I suppose it does have a tangential relevance: what would Boeheim's record be if they hadn't happened. For the sake of objectivity, I'm just going to list what I remember about them so they don't get diminished or exaggerated.
The first situation began with the book "Raw Recruits" which was a general study of how college basketball players are recruited. it was an era dominated by "street agents" who inculcated themselves with prospects and the peddled their influence to college recruiters. In one chapter they followed once such character around: Rob Johnson, who at one point, pretended to be an SU assistant. He also bought some sneakers and gear for a recruit and got him tickets for some SU games. It was noted that he was allowed to sit in the small section behind the SU bench. The authors presented this as a typical situation in college basketball but did have a comment something like "With all their success, you know Syracuse must be cheating" or something like that. (I no longer have the book). But their intent was to show what colleges had to do to get talent at that time - it was impossible to avoid these "street agent" types if you wanted to get anybody good. Nowadays they are more likely to recruit through camps, high schools and AAU teams. They could have looked at any of our rivals and found then dealing with street agents, too. When Johnson was named personna non grata at Syracuse he steered SU's Tony Scott to transfer to another school, (I think it was Texas A&M), and was no doubt compensated for doing so.
The Post Standard decided based on this book to investigate the SU basketball program. But they didn't set it up as an expose of college basketball: they set it up as an expose of SU. They covered Rob Johnson and came up with some other things, some of which seemed serious but actually worse and other things that were laughable:
- With Johnson, they established that the player involved, (I think it was Conrad MacRae), had paid him back for the sneakers, gear and tickets.
- Rodney Walker, who had transferred to Maryland over a lack of playing time, claimed he had a female professor who had changed his grade to keep him eligible. Later a check of SU's records showed that he had no female professor.
- One player had been allowed to live with a "booster" family, which was not allowed under NCAA rules. While there, he had gotten the family's daughter pregnant. it was not stated that this was statutory rape but the reader was allowed to think so. The article did not say that the player was himself underage so no crime was involved - that came out alter. They also didn't say that having players live with booster families was not against at the time this happened. When the NCAA made a rule against it, SU had stopped doing it.
- George Hicker, one of Boeheim's old teammates, had become a successful businessman in California. The paper said that he'd given a job to LeRoy Ellis, the father of LeRon Ellis, who had transferred to SU from Kentucky when their program went on probation. They cited an NCAA rule against hiring relatives in exchange for players attending schools. Hicker called the paper to try to explain that he had not hired the senior Ellis: he had contracted a security firm he worked for to provide security for a couple of building she owned. Ellis had worked for that firm for 9 years and was not assigned to either of Hicker's buildings. They never reutrned his calls so he took out an advertisement to explain the situation.
- Billy Owens, when he was the #1 recruit in the country, decided on a visit to Syracuse that he wanted to come here. In celebration he picked up a basketball and dunked it. The paper cited this as a possible violation of an NCAA rule against 'try-outs' on campus.
- A mental patient from Hutchings showed up at practice, demanding to go one on one with Stevie Thompson. to get rid of him and have some fun, JB let him try his skills vs. Stevie, who tea-bagged him. The paper also suggested this violated the try-out rule.
Aside from the absurdities and the was Hicker was treated, I didn't like the fact that the paper was specially going after SU, rather than taking the path of the Raw Recruit authors to use SU as an example of what was going on in college basketball. They listed excerpts form the rule book on the side and then told the stories next to it, suggesting that the stories could be interpreted as a violation of the rules. It was "pin the rule on the donkey".
I never saw the particulars of the NCAA decision but I heard that in two year, the investigation couldn't really find anything serious but they had to somehow justify the time they'd spent on it and so they found SU guilty of "a lack of institutional control".
Then there was the most recent situation, which involved:
- A drug use policy which the NCAA does not have but insists be given the most extreme interpretation lest athletes be given any "extra benefit" from their failure to be punished. The school didn't think a suspension or informing the parents just because a few players had tried marijuana.
- A YMCA employee failed to inform the school that players doing internships didn't perform all their required duties, did other things for charity events and got paid for it and received some free rides.
- And, then came the Fab Melo situation, where someone in the athletic department decided to help out a player by re-writing one of his papers. This, to me is by far the most serious thing uncovered by either investigation.
People can add or subtract to that litany and make up their own minds about it.
I think there are some mistakes there but it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the things we hear about at other schools. I think the first probation put a damper on our recruiting for a decade afterwards. we not only lost recruits, (Donyell Marshall? Jalen Rose?) because of it but we had to walk on eggshells because a second probation would have been much worse. If Raw Recruits had chosen to focus on a different street agent or if the Post Standard had decided to see what it takes to run a major college basketball program rather than to tear it down, it might never have happened. I think it's reasonable to suggest that Jim Boeheim's record, as great as it is, could have been much better if he'd been able continue to recruit the type of players were were getting in the late 80's.
