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. HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.