When we brought you the news that Binghamton was releasing 5 more players last Friday we speculated about how high up the administration would go to clean house. We felt that the administration was punishing the players rather than coach Kevin Broadus because of a buy-out that likely would have approached $500,000, but we knew that there would be others who would be affected by the fallout of the scandal. The first to feel the effects of the scandal was the Binghamton Zoo, who responded angrily when journalists and school officials compared the basketball program to a zoo. The next in line was Sally Dear, a lecturer in human development at Binghamton who was critical of the program and the pressure she felt to change grades for players. Dear was fired yesterday under the pretenses of an “uncertain fiscal environment” and “strategic reprioritization of resources across the university”. However, Dear noted that the chairman of the department, Leo Wilton, is a big supporter of the basketball program and that their relationship changed significantly after the Dear spoke out about the program.
While those are certainly significant events (ok, the Zoo thing is more humorous than anything else), we had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And today that shoe has certainly dropped very hard as Joel Thirer, the athletic director at Binghamton, has announce that he will resign today. Thirer (LinkedIn resume here for programs that are looking for a new AD) has served as an athletic director at Binghamton since 1989 helping them transition from a Division III program to a Division I program. While we usually would suspect that this would be a move forced by the university president, it appears this move may have been of Thirer’s own volition as he was surprisingly candid about his responsibility in the situation. With all this fallout we may end up getting more information on what actually happened than we originally anticipated (assuming Binghamton’s lawyers haven’t already drafted a strict nondisclosure agreement). Given Thirer’s candidness about the situation he may well be the one to eventually give us the details about what actually went on behind closed doors (if the lawyers don’t get in the way first). The question now is how much longer does Kevin Broadus have before he will need to have a similar press conference.
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