Chancellor Kent Syverud responded to NCAA basketball sanctions by recognizing that “Syracuse University is a great institution with a proud history.” He stressed the importance of “academic integrity,” yet praised rather than disciplined Coach Jim Boeheim, and kept the athletic director on staff. First and foremost, S.U. admittedly is guilty of certain infractions. Dignity demands immediate resignations.

The NCAA is a player in the blame game influenced by big money in professionalizing college sports. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Ed O’Bannon antitrust claim and books have been written about NCAA practices forcing major college sports programs being “fraudulent at its core.” A New York state investigation in 1951 found that football and basketball were “no longer amateur sports.”

I attended Syracuse for other reasons, partly because of its semester in Guatemala — now expired in these times of immigration reform, drug trafficking and violence there. I played sports without scholarship.

Syracuse has been a beacon of light for a struggling upstate New York region. Academics and athletics have brought an importance long before the legacy of the Jim Brown, or Dave Bing/Boeheim eras. Then SU entered a new arena metaphorically, producing some of the greatest athletes who excelled off the field, exemplifying Syracuse during the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s. Classmate Bing dedicated himself to manufacturing and as mayor in the toughest job in America. Jim Brown served as a role model for black business entrepreneurship. The late Ernie Davis carried a B average in economics and is a now honored in a physical arena, the Carrier Dome. The late John Mackey and attorney Billy Hunter were dormmates who served as the NFL players’ representative and head of the NBA players union respectively.

National collegiate sports continue to make increasing demands in order to remain competitive, often with university assistance and acquiescence. The question is whether an all-out emphasis on athletics is the best way to achieve a national reputation. When is it time to reflect on its success, its excess?

In the most important arena, academics, Syracuse offers excellence in Fine Arts, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and others. Its historic relationship with Cornell University should draw an important lesson from that venerable Ivy League institution, which sustains itself without a top-level major sports program. Syracuse can and should do the same.

Bruce Cort Daniels ‘64