The night before, a few friends and I bought tickets for next to nothing. We arrived at the Garden two hours early in order to get to the front of the line and sit as close to David Stern as possible. About an hour into our wait in the scorching heat, a chorus of angry voices chanted from outside the lobby, "Fire Layden!" It was the grass roots group selltheknicks.com, which, as promised, marched around the building harassing the Knicks ownership.
Certain aspects of the Draft you just can't sense on television. The crowd and the room-the Theater at the Garden-are much bigger than the TV coverage suggests. While on TV it seems that every draft pick shakes Stern's hand, in reality only a tiny fraction of the selected players actually attend the Draft. But most striking about the Draft in person is the physical setup of the ESPN crew and how it affects their interaction with the players in the room. The projected lottery picks sit in a pit in the front right corner of the Theater, and the ESPN analysts sit at a desk in the crowd maybe 40 feet in front of Stern's podium. The commentators' microphone feeds not only to TV viewers, but also live in the Draft room. So as Stern greets each draft pick, Jay Bilas rips the selection relentlessly, tearing his skills, effort, size or some combination of the above completely to shreds. The entire discourse-animated by some Stephen A. Smith screaming and Dan Patrick sarcasm, diluted thankfully by Greg Anthony's steady logic-is overheard by the player and by his family and friends, who interrupt their celebration only to shoot a scowl in Bilas' direction.
And in this glorious era of professional basketball in New York, what would the draft be without a dose, or several doses, of humiliation for the Knicks? With the Bulls on the clock at #2 overall-the pick New York surrendered for Eddy Curry-the faithful demanded, "Where's our draft pick?" To stir up the crowd more, ESPN flashed on the big screen a "Knicks Under Isiah Thomas" graphic: a report card from hell. Then, predictably, at picks #3 through #19, every star player in every mock draft's top 20 was chosen. Literally, my entire top 20 was crossed out in red pen. Except one name: UConn point guard Marcus Williams, alleged laptop thief but passing wizard. A gift had fallen from the lottery straight into Isiah's lap. The crowd's hate turned to hope, jeers to cheers, as it begged ownership to crown Williams as Stephon Marbury's heir with the 20th pick. In one remarkable flow of subsequent chaos-you couldn't have written it better in a script-the Knicks picked no-name Renaldo Balkman, Stern announced that he was not in attendance, ESPN's Dan Patrick quipped, "That's probably a good thing," and the disgusted crowd erupted in outrage, some lambasting Knicks brass from their seats, some sprinting down the aisles, arms flailing, as if beseeching God to depose Isiah. Before I left, the Nets swept up Williams at #22, and an incensed throng of Knicks fans being interviewed on ESPN referred to Isiah as a body part on live national TV.
New AD provides opportunity for change
Last year's exhaustive search for a new full-time athletic director has culminated with the hiring of Suzanne Coffey, parent of Brad Coffey '04 and former director of athletics at NESCAC rival Bates College. Coffey takes control of the country's oldest athletic program, which is in need of strong, creative leadership, and perhaps a broad vision for change. On the surface, the state of the athletic program is superb, highlighted by stellar records in the NESCAC, high rates of student participation and retention, and several perennially successful teams such as women's tennis and men's basketball. But the College's day-to-day underbelly confronts athletes with a more challenging reality. They are negatively stereotyped by some students, as the wildly vitriolic athlete vs. non-athlete Daily Jolt threads illustrate. Then again, perhaps with such a tiny enrollment at Amherst, some stereotyping is inevitable, and there may be little or nothing that an athletic department can do to fix the judgmental eye of segments of the student body.
The danger arises when faculty get involved. Last year some athletes were held back from competition by professors whose decisions were completely subjective. Academics unquestionably come first, but we must be past the point of having to prove that athletics are an important part of college for athletes. The athletic department needs to step in and go to bat for its athletes by, at the very least, providing each professor with a game list for every athlete in a given course. The College should clearly define the degree of academic inadequacy that merits being kept from a game. Taking subjectivity out of the equation is a good first step.
The athletic department should be a powerful, principled advocate of its athletes, especially those who are unjustly swept into the stereotype. Based on initial reports, Coffey is exactly the right person to take on such a daunting task. Dean of the Faculty Gregory Call told the College Web site that Coffey is committed to "the integration of scholar-athletes into the wider academic community" and "has demonstrated not only a keen knowledge of the fundamental issues facing collegiate athletes at highly selective institutions, but also a willingness to seek innovative solutions."
"Integration into the wider academic community," we should hope, has already been accomplished, as it has been a tenet of athletics at the College for 185 years. Amherst athletes are fully capable of ensuring the quality of their academic experience without being reminded by the athletic department or the College. Athletes need their athletic department to talk to the faculty about the importance of sports at Amherst, and to codify specific standards for being held from a game. If an athlete complains of mistreatment or subjective punishment, the athletic department should contact the professor on the athlete's behalf to broker a solution. Such an approach may be less than innovative, but it will go a long way towards remedying the "fundamental issues facing collegiate athletes at highly selective institutions."