Perspectives: What Does Miami Have To Do With the Horizon League?

What does the exploding scandal surrounding the University of Miami football program have to do with the Horizon League?

Nothing.

And everything.

Nothing, because football isn’t even a League-sponsored sport. Nothing, because intercollegiate athletics in general and football specifically is as about as far removed from the missions and budgets of our League institutions as the Atlantic is from the Pacific. Nothing because surely, we believe, the thought of any of our institution’s athletic “boosters” lavishing this kind of Miami Vice on our student-athletes is unthinkable.

Right?

But it has everything to do with the Horizon League because, after all, Miami plays in the same sandbox that we do -- NCAA Division I. Everything because the mess they create becomes, in part, the mess we have to try to clean up. Everything, because all of us in intercollegiate athletics -- especially Division I -- get painted with the same broad brush, as unfair as that may seem. Everything because, at the end of every season, these are the guys we are trying to compete against, and beat, in sports other than football.

The Miami scandal, coming on the heels of the scandals, investigations and probations at the likes of Ohio State, North Carolina, USC, Auburn, Oregon et al, allows both media and fans to say things like:

• They are all cheating.
• If they’re not cheating, they’re not winning.
• That the NCAA, presidents, athletic directors, conference administrators and coaches are all living large off the labors of exploited student-athletes and therefore, loathe to change the system and admit to the rampant corruption while clinging to that out-dated notion of amateurism.

We know these things to be untrue. But we also know, sadly, that perception too often becomes the reality.

Our reality at the Horizon League is 10 well-led, hard-working athletic departments doing their absolute best -- often with constrained budgets -- to deliver a values-based, education-based, qualitative experience to the young men and women entrusted to them.

Our reality at the Horizon League is one of compliance. We do it the right way. We must do it the right way. We cannot allow for short-cuts to success. We cannot allow any of our teams or institutions to bring scandal and shame to campus and the league, because that is how we differentiate ourselves from the perception.

When scandals break, like the one at Miami now, we must stand up and say to all  who will listen: We are not like that. We are not them. That is not what we are about.

The worst we can do is to remain silent, lest they believe otherwise.