The Morning According to Us

Binghamton has more than a game on the line tonight.

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Duke is the latest Binghamton hurdle. And opportunity.

One way to look at yesterday's sexual harassment complaint at Binghamton University—that almost comically maligned and yet endlessly heartwarming schlub of a school—is that BU better hope to beat Duke tonight. Nothing less than the school's legacy will be on the line. For an academically minded school like BU, its basketball team is a good case study in, "At what price, fame?"

Binghamton, if Selection Sunday didn't make this painfully clear, has gained its first NCAA appearance. It's the little school that could. From D-III 15 years ago to the Blue Devils tonight! What a story! But in its concerted, 10-year push to raise its athletic profile, the Bearcats went all Jerry Tarkanian on the recruitng landscape, bringing in guys of questionable character and ill-defined academic interests. The university is not pleased. Faculty and staff say they've been asked by the AD to loosen their standards for basketball players. Out of the classroom, there have been problems, too, some of them dumb, like the guard who stole condoms from Wal-Mart even though the school handed them out for free. Others are more serious: The ex-forward now on the lam in Serbia for beating a Binghamton student into a coma. Now there's the sexual harassment complaint.

No players are involved here. Just the highest levels of the athletics department. Elizabeth Williams raised money for the program. She claims two male coworkers told her her job was to flirt, not think. In March 2008, after a dinner in which a major donor kept putting $100 bills on the table, as enticement for Williams to sleep with him, Williams fled to an elevator, where she was allegedly felt up by an associate AD. He apparently wanted to know if her breasts "were up to standard," according to the complaint. The next morning, he allegedly tried convincing her that nothing had happened the night before.

These types of outlandish accounts surface somewhat regularly at major schools. We forget them after a time and return to the games, because those are compelling and memorable. That's what makes tonight's contest so important for Binghamton. If the Bearcats win tonight, it was worth it in some ways—all of the loosened standards and chauvenistic treatment. It's a crude and possibly terrible thing to say, but 10 years from now, fans will remember Binghamton's massive upset of Duke much more than Williams' lawsuit, or a Serbian extradition, however needed it may be. School applications will rise as they always do when teams gain March notoriety. Donors will grab their wallets. Academic profiles go up. Buildings could be built. These things really happen. And I wish Binghamton well.

But if the Bearcats lose tonight, they may be remembered by fewer people 10 years from now, or worse, remembered more for everything else. Maybe BU athletic officials knew they were making this Faustian deal when they pushed themselves to D-I. In any case, we'll see soon see its resolution.

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