Another school may have violated NCAA rules

[Gerk]

This time it's

Harvard


BOSTON — Harvard has never won an Ivy League title in men’s basketball and has not reached the N.C.A.A. tournament since 1946. This season, the team won only 8 of its first 28 games. Like all the universities in the Ivy League, Harvard does not award athletic scholarships.


Yet the group of six recruits expected to join the team next season is rated among the nation’s 25 best. This is partly because Harvard Coach Tommy Amaker, who starred at Duke and coached in the Big East and Big Ten conferences, has set his sights on top-flight recruits. It is also because Harvard is willing to consider players with a lower academic standing than previous staff members said they were allowed to. Harvard has also adopted aggressive recruiting tactics that skirt or, in some cases, may even violate National Collegiate Athletic Association rules.
Harvard’s efforts in basketball underscore the increasingly important role that success in high-profile sports plays at even the most elite universities. In the race to become competitive in basketball, Harvard’s new approach could tarnish the university’s sterling reputation.
Two athletes who said they had received letters from Harvard’s admissions office saying they would most likely be accepted have described tactics that may violate N.C.A.A. rules, including visits from a man who worked out with them shortly before he was hired by Harvard to be an assistant coach.
An N.C.A.A. spokesman, Erik Christianson, said the organization’s rules state, “Should a coach recruit on behalf of a school but not be employed there, he or she is then considered a booster and that recruiting activity is not allowed.”
In another case, Amaker approached the parents of an athlete in a grocery store and urged that their son visit Harvard, even though N.C.A.A. rules limit contact with potential players to happenstance at certain times of the year. That athlete ended up not considering Harvard.
Yale Coach James Jones said he had seen an academic change at Harvard. “It’s eye-opening because there seems to have been a drastic shift in restrictions and regulations with the Harvard admissions office,” he said.
“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.”
Harvard’s athletic director, Bob Scalise, acknowledged that Amaker’s staff had recruited some players with lower academic profiles than the previous staff had, but he stressed that no athletes had yet been admitted.
“It’s also a willingness to basically say, ‘O.K., maybe we need to accept a few more kids and maybe we need to go after a few more kids in the initial years when Tommy is trying to change the culture of the program,’ ” Scalise said last week. “It’s a willingness to say that we really do want to compete for the Ivy championship.”
To be sure, programs at larger universities would be delighted to have players with the academic standing of Amaker’s new recruits. Scalise said that other Ivy League programs also considered Harvard’s recruits.
Harvard, he said, has chosen to remake its basketball program into a perennial contender for the Ivy title and the automatic berth in the N.C.A.A. tournament that goes with it.
Scalise said he was made aware of “three or four” complaints of recruiting incidents from rivals and sat down with Amaker last November for “a teaching moment.” He said he told Amaker that he and his staff needed to act in ways “beyond reproach.”
But Scalise said he was not aware until told by The New York Times that Amaker’s top assistant, Kenny Blakeney, had traveled a long distance to play pickup basketball with a recruit during periods when the N.C.A.A. does not allow contact with prospective players. Blakeney said he had not been officially hired by Harvard when he visited that recruit and another prospective player.
Even if Harvard did not break any N.C.A.A. rules, many in the coaching community said Amaker’s staff had behaved unethically.

[revnecro1273]

i didn't know ammaker was the coach for them...that explains why harvard got michigan to play at harvard this year...go figure...gives them a loss when he coached michigan and michigan gets a loss against him

[FadethePack]

"Even if Harvard did not break any N.C.A.A. rules, many in the coaching community said Amaker’s staff had behaved unethically."

Here is the qualifier that basically shows you that this is all other Ivy League Universities giving Harvard a hard time.

Who really gives a damn about what these coaches do anymore? I say as long as it isn't in violation of the general statutes in that state or a federal law then let them do whatever the hell they want. Screw the NCAA rules, they aren't enforceable and they certainly aren't enforced equitably.