Minnesota morally broke, deserves what it gets

Author Henry Miller once said, "Hope is a bad thing. It means you are not what you want to be."\nAt the University of Minnesota, the men's basketball program looks to an optimistic future with star forward Rick Rickert headed back for his sophomore season and staying away from the NBA for now. Meanwhile, coach Dan Monson decided to stay instead of leaving for the University of Washington job.\nMinnesota's past, though, makes one wonder why they should have a future for which to look forward. In fact, the NCAA should have shut down the basketball program and put it on the "death penalty" a while ago.\nIn 1972, Ohio State and Minnesota engaged in a bench-clearing brawl that they are still talking about. Ohio State's Luke Witte got knocked to the floor, and in a move that can only be described as a "Gopher Hello," Minnesota's Corky Taylor went to pick him up only to knee him in the groin. One of the ugliest melees in college sports history ensued. And you think Jesse "The Body" Ventura's impact has been short-term only.\nWhile bad character may indicate poor supervision, it may have foreshadowed a growing scandal. Three years after the brawl, the NCAA notified Minnesota of more than 150 allegations of improper cash payments and gifts to basketball players. Coach Bill Musselman immediately resigned. The school was put on probation and the basketball program lost three scholarships.\nMusselman's successor, Jim Dutcher, resigned abruptly in 1986 after three players were arrested (and eventually acquitted) for the raping of an 18-year-old Madison, Wisc. woman after a Gopher road game. The program was later exposed for having the worst player graduation rates in the Big Ten during the Dutcher Era.\nA routine April 1988 audit led to the next scandal. Luther Darville, then-acting coordinator of the Office of Minority and Special Student Affairs at Minnesota, had $200,000 missing from his office. He admitted he gave the money to Gopher football and men's basketball players. Not only did Darville spend 18 months in jail, but the university also fired him and wound up on probation in 1991. \nApparently, the lesson learned had nothing to do with ethical standards and everything to do with not being stupid enough to get caught.\nThat's because the 1999 academic cheating scandal at Minnesota blew the doors off what happened before. Academic counselor Jan Gangelhoff admitted to writing 400 papers, take-home tests and other assignments for Gopher basketball players during a five-year period in exchange for cash payments and a Hawaiian vacation, and coach Clem Haskins, always thinking, had told Gangelhoff not to make the papers "too good" lest professors get suspicious.\nIn that respect she failed. Forward Courtney James turned in a paper that a professor called the best he had seen in 40 years of teaching. This would be the same Courtney James who had been ineligible to play under Proposition 48's academic guidelines.\nWhen academic fraud wouldn't work, Haskins, who is black, would threaten to publicly expose professors by making racial allegations against them. The team, meanwhile, put together a stellar 1.64 GPA, according to a 1999 Sports Illustrated article.\nHaskins resigned in June 1999 with an insane $1.5 million buyout after the university first believed that Haskins had no involvement in the scandal, and in case you thought your state income tax dollars are spent in a wasteful fashion, imagine living in Minnesota. University president Mark Yudof even credited Haskins for teaching the players to become "honorable men." Meanwhile, the players and their accomplishments, namely the 1997 Final Four team, have been expunged from the record books. \nThat brings us to this past week. The university is suing Haskins to recover much of the buyout after the Mt. Everest of evidence that Yudof and the administration decided to initially ignore pointed to Haskins. This evidence also included sexual harassment and more player payment allegations. Haskins has admitted to lying but said the university should have known when questioning him that he was lying. Last week, the sides agreed to arbitration in order to determine what, if anything, Haskins is going to repay.\nEverybody, even Haskins, agrees that he was involved in the biggest fraud scandal in college sports history, but the university's denial after the giddy hangover of the 1997 Final Four obscured them from the truth.\nMeanwhile, Minnesota's team and fans will hold on to hope. But they don't deserve even that.