New York Times on Dakich and WVU

It is one of the signature moments in Falcon sports, if infamy counts.

And a turning point.

The year was 2002.  Falcon men's basketball coach Dan Dakich had done what was always expected of him...he was doing what people on the Bob Knight coaching tree did...he was moving into the upper reaches of college basketball.

Our team was 79-41 over the previous four years.

It is no secret what happened next.  Dakich spent a week in Morgantown and then decided to return to Bowling Green.  He never again had success at Bowling Green and was, in retrospect, on his way out of coaching.  Our program has also not had any real success since that day in 2002.

I know you have to be careful about taking events in time and making cause and effect relationships when you are looking back.  You can decide for yourself.

The facts are what they are.  In the 10 seasons since, BG has had two winning years.  During that time, we are 143-165.

For whatever reason, Pete Thamel of the New York Times decided to write on this story today.  You can check it out here, but it describes Dakich finding incriminating evidence of the program at WVU (a player promised $20,000 per year), reporting it, being threatened (in the presence of his wife) and then returning to BG.  It also describes the denials of WVU officials and the fact that the NCAA investigated and took no action.

Dakich haters at BG believe that he got cold feet and inflated his concerns about the payments to get out of the deal.

This story breaks down to "he said, he said" in a sense.  And I do not have a good explanation for why the NCAA never acted.

A couple notes though.

The WVU President says that Dakich's account of their meeting (in which Dakich says he threatened to "destroy" Dakich) was "grossly exaggerated."  Which, in the annals of denials, is the kind of thing that stands out as not exactly a categorical statement of innocence.

And, Dakich describes how sad the player in question was when he recounted a life of being "owned"....which is not the kind of detail you come up with when you are making something up, unless you are a sociopath...which I don't think Dakich was.

Finally, it wasn't just Dan in the room.

I mean, if you have Dan and his wife exaggerating something to that level of detail on one hand and a big-time college president threatening to "destroy" someone who is trying to expose something he'd rather have kept quiet, and you ask me which is more likely...I'm going to tell you the second.

Anyway, there are three people who know what was said in that room, and I'm not one of them.  An interesting story and an interesting chance to reflect on this moment in Falcon history.