INC NEWS - Alleva, Trask & Burness should find new jobs (John Feinstein, AOL)

[John Schelp]

"Duke can begin moving forward when the trustees meet
next week if Trask, Alleva and Burness are told to
find new jobs."
--John Feinstein


Duke's Handling of Lacrosse Mess Has Been Disastrous
Athletic Director Alleva, Vice President Trask Should
Be Fired (By John Feinstein, AOL, 08 May 2006)

Sports Commentary

A lot of basketball coaches, notably those who have to
compete with him regularly in the Atlantic Coast
Conference, have frequently complained in recent years
about the string of TV commercials Mike Krzyzewski has
appeared in as a pitchman for various corporations.
"Unfair recruiting advantage," they huff, sick and
tired of the pristine image of Duke and, as one coach
eloquently puts it, "the sainted f----- Coach K."

Well, the boys needn't worry about Duke's pristine
image anymore. It has been shattered, not by
Krzyzewski or his high-profile basketball team, but by
the school's lacrosse team, a group known before the
last six weeks only by friends, family and those who
follow the niche sport (albeit a growing one) that is
lacrosse.

Now, the entire world knows Duke has a lacrosse team.
Specifically, the world knows it has a lacrosse team
that has been guilty of immature, idiotic,
out-of-control behavior for years. A prosecutor in
Durham says at least two members of the team are
guilty of rape. His case, at least based on the
evidence presented thus far, appears to be shaky at
best; politically motivated at worst. To the accuser;
to the two players under indictment and their families
and to those close to Duke lacrosse, the outcome of
that case is hugely significant.

But let's put it aside for the moment, not because it
lacks importance, but because we all lack facts. It
is, sadly, a he-said; she-said case (especially in
light of the current lack of DNA evidence) and has
become a racially-charged issue because the accuser is
African-American and the accused are not only white,
but rich, privileged, lawyered-up and white. The legal
case will eventually take care of itself one way or
the other. In the meantime, Duke finds itself faced
with a series of questions that have very little to do
with whether a rape took place on that ill-fated March
night at a party that got out of control.

Let's first deal with the "boys-will-be-boys," excuse
that has come up and will continue to come up - again
the question of rape aside because even Duke's
see-no-evil administrators know that goes well beyond
any boys-will-be-boys defense. The notion that because
drinking is an epidemic on college campuses (it is)
and that because athletes all around the country throw
wild parties and hire strippers (they do) that the
Duke lacrosse players should not be punished for their
behavior, is ill-conceived, navie and, frankly,
stupid.

For one thing, two wrongs or ten or 100 or 1,000,
don't make a right. What's more, according to a report
released on May 2 by seven members of the Duke
faculty, there was a written report two years ago sent
to top Duke administrators telling them that there was
a serious problem with the behavior of the lacrosse
team. What this tells us is that this party was far
from being an isolated incident, it was part of a
pattern that the school chose to ignore.

It also tells us - definitively - that Tallman Trask,
the school vice president who received the report and
Joe Alleva, the athletic director who Trask mentioned
the report to (without every giving it to him or being
asked for it) should both be fired. Not reprimanded,
not told to do better, fired. They had a written
report from someone who worked at the school - not a
member of the "out of control," media as Duke
apologists have taken to referring to as a cop-out for
this debacle - but someone who worked for the school
who had done research on specific incidents and found
a pattern that concerned him enough to put those
concerns in writing.

Trask did nothing.

Alleva did nothing.

The Duke board of trustees will be in Durham this
week. If, when those meetings are over, President
Richard Brodhead doesn't announce that Trask and
Alleva are gone, he should be fired. And the trustees
should all be asked to resign for not demanding the
exits of Trask and Alleva.

A few words of disclaimer here: I am a graduate of
Duke. In 1998, after Tom Butters retired as athletic
director, I was one of a number of Duke graduates who
had connections to the sports world who pushed
then-President Nan Keohane and Trask to hire Tom
Mickle as his successor. Not only was Mickle a Duke
graduate who had worked at Duke and as the No. 2 man
in the Atlantic Coast Conference, he was one of the
brightest and most innovative people in college
sports. When he met with Keohane, he brought with him
comprehensive plans on how to try to fix Duke football
and how to fund non-revenue programs that were
un-funded at the time.

Keohane chose Alleva because she didn't want someone
who was bright and innovative. She had worked
previously at Wellesley and had made it clear to
people around her that Krzyzewski's importance to Duke
bothered her. After all basketball was a sport; it
wasn't an academic pursuit. This isn't the place for a
debate on why successful sports teams - managed
properly - can be good for any college at any level.
Keohane wanted someone who wouldn't rock the good-ship
Duke athletics which was kept afloat by the money
brought in by Krzyzewski's basketball team. That was
plenty as far as she was concerned. 

She hired Alleva and then she and Trask and their
mouthpiece John Burness went around claiming Alleva
was the best choice. The fact that no one who knew
anything about athletics supported Alleva was
irrelevant.

They knew Alleva wasn't the best choice, he was the
easy choice. When I publicly blasted Keohane for the
Alleva hiring, Burness told some local writers I was
just upset because my friend Mickle hadn't gotten the
job.

Sure. And Gene Corrigan (former ACC commissioner);
Carl James (then commissioner of The Big 12); Mike
McGee (South Carolina AD); Bill Brill (Duke athletics
Hall of Fame member who has covered college athletics
for 50 years) all of them Duke grads who told Keohane
she should hire Mickle, all did so because Mickle was
their friend. It couldn't possibly be because Mickle
was the best person for Duke could it? Nah, why would
they want what was best for Duke?

Alleva's performance before the lacrosse debacle, has
been undistinguished to put it politely. Duke
football, terrible when he took over, is now worse.
(Brilliant move turning down Bobby Ross, who has only
won a national title and coached in the Super Bowl to
hire the immortal Ted Roof). Alleva also hired a crony
of his to coach baseball and kept him around through
one losing season after another until accusations by
ex-players that the coach had encouraged them to used
steriods finally forced his hand.

When the lacrosse story first broke, Alleva's initial
public reaction was, "this is an unfortunate
incident."

Huh? Unfortunate? Losing to LSU in the Sweet Sixteen
was an unfortunate incident for Duke. This goes well
beyond that. Alleva has basically been told since then
to shut up and not say anything publicly because he
can't be trusted to keep his foot out of his mouth. 

Someone should have told Trask the same thing. Two
weeks ago he was quoted in the Duke student newspaper,
The Chronicle, as saying that he was aware there were
behavioral problems with the lacrosse team (he did not
mention that he had seen a written report on the
subject) but felt as if the school had a handle on
those problems.

Apparently not.

Duke's handling of this disaster has been disastrous.
When the women's basketball team went to the Final
Four in Boston, members of the media were instructed
not to ask the players questions about the lacrosse
situation. In other words, the school - Alleva?
Burness? Trask? Brodhead? - had decided that these
fine young student-athletes, weren't capable of saying
something like, "gee, we don't know much about this,
but we're all saddened by it for everyone involved."
Or, "you never want to see something like this happen
at your school or to your school." No, the smart move,
according to the bosses, was to publicly stonewall,
make sure everyone noticed that a cover-up was in
progress.

In some ways, there is nothing Duke can do to put this
incident completely behind it. The words, "Duke
lacrosse," will be a catch-phrase for jock misbehavior
for years to come, regardless of the outcome of the
rape case. But Duke can begin moving forward when the
trustees meet next week if Trask, Alleva and Burness
are told to find new jobs. Tragically, Burness can't
spin this to make the ridiculous claim that I'm
pushing Tom Mickle for the AD's job because Mickle
died on April 17th.

Here's some spin for Keohane, Trask and Burness: this
never would have gotten to this point had Mickle been
AD. He was a pro-active administrator, not a reactive
one. You can bet if he'd been told there was a written
report on lacrosse misbehavior in 2004, he would have
taken aggressive steps to correct the problem -
immediately.

It's really too bad Duke can't retroactivally fire
Keohane. Those she left behind need to go. Then,
Broadhead needs to form a search committee of athletic
people - start with Corrigan, McGee, Brill, Krzyzewski
and women's basketball coach Gail Goestenkors - to
find a new athletic director.

Once he/she is hired, a new task force should be put
in place to report to the AD on what went wrong with
Duke athletics; what is still wrong and what should be
done to make it better. Because here's a fact: if a
Duke athlete, any Duke athlete, is standing on a
street corner and his/her bookbag accidentally hits
someone in the arm, there will be headlines across the
country that will say: "Duke Athlete Involved in Brawl
on Street."

Fair? No. Fact of life? Yes.

Whether Duke plays lacrosse next year really doesn't
matter. The damage is done. The only way for repair
work to begin is for the people in charge to admit
their mistakes; fire those who oversaw all of this and
try to begin anew. One thing about life is fairly
simple: you can't fix something until you admit it is
broken.

Your move, President Brodhead.