I had said just a couple weeks ago that I didn’t know how many of these cases would come out of the woodwork, but I knew they were coming. Now, the Syracuse scandal with Bernie Fine is here, Jim Boeheim initially defended him, and then Fine got fired and Boeheim had to back off his earlier statements.
The coach said that:
“What happened on my watch, we’ll see. When the investigation is done, we’ll find out what happened on my watch. Right now there are no charges, no indictment, no grand jury and no action has been taken. When that’s done, we’ll see what happened on my watch.”
“No ball boys traveled with our team, they never have. We’ve had ball boys move on to other positions and it’s not unusual from time to time to have people with our group, but not ball boys”
About his defense of Fine:
“I was supporting a friend, that’s what I thought I was doing. “If you know somebody for 30 years, if you went to school with him, for what he did for this program, I thought he deserved my allegiance and my gratitude. … I said when more facts came forward and more facts did come forward, and the university made a change. You know so much one day and three or four days later you know more.”
I don’t think Jim is in danger of losing his job, but I do think that he is in danger of losing in the court of public opinion for his initial defense of Fine and what may or may not have happened under his watch.
This is scary stuff coming out Syracuse, and I do fear for coach Boeheim in the long term. This is not something that is going to be tolerated at all in colleges ever and lots of people will get fired over these kinds of things in the future.
