Sports
Questions about Recruiting
An article alleging that Harvard had lowered academic standards for recruits to its men’s basketball program, and might also have skirted or violated National Collegiate Athletic Associations (NCAA) rules governing recruiting, appeared March 2 on the front page of the New York Times Sunday sports section. “Harvard has never won an Ivy League title in men’s basketball and has not reached the NCAA tournament since 1946,” the article began, asserting that, in an attempt to improve the program, the College had adopted a “new approach” that could “tarnish the University’s sterling reputation.”
University officials vigorously disputed the allegation that Harvard had lowered its academic standards in any way even before the article appeared. In a written statement quoted in the Times, Harvard vice president for government, community, and public affairs Alan J. Stone characterized “any suggestion that our standards have been lowered for basketball” as “absolutely inaccurate.” But two high-ranking University sources say separately that Harvard is investigating (under the auspices of the Ivy League) the possibility that NCAA recruiting rules were violated, with a focus on the actions of assistant coach Kenneth L. Blakeney in the weeks before the team hired him last July.
Last June, Blakeney reportedly played pick-up basketball on separate occasions with two recruits later admitted to Harvard, during a period when contact with potential players is not allowed. Even though Blakeney was not a Harvard employee at the time, if such contact leads to “a significant competitive or recruiting advantage,” according to wording on the NCAA website, it could be considered a major infraction of its rules. A reviewer chosen from outside the Harvard athletics department will submit findings to the Ivy League Office and a committee made up of representatives from each of the other Ivy schools, who will take the case from there, and to the NCAA if necessary.
Photograph by Stu Rosner
H. Tommy Amaker
The Times article based its separate assertions that Harvard had lowered its standards for men’s basketball on the admissions status—then unknown—of one or more of the athletes whom Harvard head coach H. Tommy Amaker had been recruiting for the incoming freshman class. The reporter sought comment on Harvard’s list of prospects from several sources. The Yale men’s basketball coach, James Jones, was quoted as saying, “We don’t know how all this is going to come out, but we could not get involved with many of the kids that they are bringing in.” Two former Harvard assistant coaches whose contracts were not renewed under Amaker, now in his first year on the job, commented that academic standards for the recruits appeared lower than they remembered. Amaker did not respond to requests for an interview.
But “coaches do not make admissions decisions” in the Ivy League, athletic director Robert L. Scalise, who hired Amaker, pointed out in an interview. The admissions process is separate and, typically, only about half the recruits on a coach’s wish list are admitted. In a letter sent to alumni athletes in March, Scalise (who became interim executive dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences [FAS] that month) noted that “all of the student-athletes who we’ve been recruiting have had significant contact” with the other coaches mentioned in the article.
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