As promised, here is my post as it should have read:
 
In his "final words" on the subject, Greg Ambrose says:
 
"Shawn Walsh and the UMaine athletic department, whether it was intentional
or unintentional, violated NCAA rules.  For those violations, the UMaine
hockey program was put on a  postseason probation and denied a certain
number of scholarships over a two year period.  Despite these violations
and the embarrassment they caused the school (and the sport of college
hockey), the UMaine administration saw fit to punish the coach, not by
firing him, but suspending him for one year.  These are the facts, correct.
Does anyone care to dispute them?
     "The FACT that the UMaine administration did not fire Coach Walsh for
his
transgressions, led me (and several others) to the conclusion that the
UMaine administration was not as concerned with the ethical makeup of their
faculty as they were with the fact that the faculty member in question
coached a winning hockey team. . . .
     "As long as Shawn Walsh is at Maine . . . it says to me that UMaine -
administration, faculty and student body - cares more about a winning hockey
program than the moral and ethical makeup of members of its community."
 
Two points must be made about Greg's post.
 
First, it would appear that he has finally conceded, at least as a
possibility, what the NCAA concluded many moons ago after a lengthy
investigation--that most of the violations committed by Shawn Walsh and
others at the University of Maine were unintentional. Greg doesn't actually
say this, but for purposes of argument, he speaks of violations "whether
intentional or unintentional." The NCAA, on the other hand, was quite
specific in its report on the investigation, which Greg obviously hasn't
read, saying (a) that most of the violations at UMaine were unintentional,
(b) that most were self-reported, and (c) that the university cooperated
fully with the investigation. The NCAA investigators specifically asked
whether Shawn Walsh was guilty of unethical conduct, and concluded that he
was not.
 
Second, despite the above, Greg says that the university's failure to fire
Shawn Walsh led him to conclude that "the administration, faculty and student
body [at the University of Maine] cares more about a winning hockey program
than the moral and ethical makeup of members of its community." How can he
reach such a conclusion, if most of the violations were unintentional? For
Walsh's conduct to be immoral or unethical, one must assume intent--if not to
violate NCAA rules, at least to cover up unintentional violations. The NCAA
looked for both, but found neither.
 
The other possibility is that Greg believes that the appropriate course for a
university adminstration caught in an embarrassing situation is to find a
scapegoat and fire him. Indeed, a literal reading of his post ("The FACT that
the UMaine administration did not fire Coach Walsh for his transgressions,
led me [and several others] to the conclusion that the UMaine administration
was not as concerned with the ethical makeup of their faculty as they were
with the fact that the faculty member in question coached a winning hockey
team.") lends itself to that conclusion. Retrospectively, that would have
been the easier course for the university administration to follow, but it
was a course that then-President Hutchinson rejected.
 
Would that have been the "moral" or "ethical" course to follow? Hardly. As
anyone who reads either the University of Maine self-report or the NCAA
report can readily see, the problem that led to the NCAA sanctions was not
the fault of a single individual, but rather the culmination of a wide range
of factors, including a failure on the part of the university adminstration
to recognize the importance of developing a compliance program within the
athletic department, along with budget cuts that led to a heightened focus on
marketing and sales efforts and a further diminution of the relative
importance of formal compliance efforts, at least from a budgetary
standpoint. In NCAA parlance, the net result was a finding that the
University of Maine was guilty of "lack of institutional control." The NCAA
found that Shawn Walsh was guilty of failing to ensure that the hockey
program was in compliance with NCAA rules and regulations--but also that the
university didn't have programs in place to backstop Walsh and prevent his
failures from resulting in actual violations. The NCAA did NOT find that
Walsh was a rogue coach, or that the hockey program was a rogue program. It
did NOT find that Walsh or the hockey program tried to avoid compliance.
 
The University of Maine recognized that Walsh's violations were serious, but
the university also recognized that his violations weren't wilful or
intentional. Walsh was guilty of bad judgment, but not of wilfully attempting
to gain an unfair advantage by violating NCAA rules. As a result, the
university decided to suspend Walsh for a year, which is a lot more than a
slap on the wrist. But with all available evidence indicating that Walsh's
worst sin was bad judgment, and that his conduct was not unethical,
then-President Hutchinson concluded that there was no cause to fire him. To
do so would have been to make Walsh a scapegoat--a sacrificial offering to
crusading newspaper reporters and editors--and would not have solved the
problem, which was the failure to provide the proper focus and resources
necessary for compliance with the maze of NCAA regulations regarding
athletics and student-athletes.
 
As I have said before, the entire process--the initial allegations, the
self-investigation, the NCAA investigation, the self-imposed punishments
(Walsh's suspension and the first year of NCAA tournament ineligibility), the
NCAA sanctions, and all the hoopla and controversy that surrounded it--was
very unpleasant and corrosive of good morale. Hockey is supposed to be fun,
but it wasn't anywhere near as fun as it should have been during that period.
But despite the conclusions and accusations of people like Greg Ambrose, the
University of Maine took this whole process very, very seriously, and the
administration's overriding concerns were to ensure that all violations,
whether major or minor, were fully and voluntarily reported to the NCAA, and
that the appropriate compliance infrastructure was put into place to prevent
future violations. This, we believe, has been done.
 
So, I truly hope that Greg's post represents his "final words" on this
subject, because his conclusion--that the University of Maine cares more
about winning hockey games than it does about maintaining ethical
standards--is slanderous and not in keeping with the facts.