Posted by mlemaire on November 18th, 2011
We were going to start this morning’s post with a throwaway news piece about the newly published Jim Boeheim book and probably wish Boeheim a half-hearted happy 67th birthday. Then ESPN‘s Outside The Lines dropped a bombshell on Boeheim and the entire Syracuse University basketball program by reporting that longtime Orange assistant coach Bernie Fine was being investigated by Syracuse police for allegedly molesting two former team ball boys for more than a decade.
Bernie Fine is a Longtime SU Assistant and Close Boeheim Friend (credit: SU)
Syracuse isn’t taking any chances in light of what’s happened in State College the last few weeks. The school announced Fine has already been placed on administrative leave and just about everyone from the university has issued a statement expressing how seriously they take the charges. The immediate rush was to compare these allegations to the recent scandal still going on at Penn State. But there appear to be several very distinct differences those following the story should consider before they rush to judgment.
First — as Yahoo! columnist Dan Wetzel pointed out on Twitter — the police opening an investigation into an alleged incident is much different from a grand jury bringing criminal charges against someone in a presentment. The grand jury had eyewitness accounts and evidence from official police investigations rising to the level of confessions of inappropriate touching by Jerry Sandusky. The Syracuse police are basing their investigation of Fine from the testimony of the alleged victims — Bobby Davis and his stepbrother Mike Lang — and a previous investigation into the same crime in 2005 that Syracuse Senior Vice President for Public Affairs Kevin Quinn said, “included a number of interviews with people the complainant said would support his claims. All of those identified by the complainant denied any knowledge of wrongful conduct by the associate coach. The associate coach also vehemently denied the allegations.”
Read the rest of this entry »
| big east, microsites
| Tagged: bernie fine, jim boeheim, scandals, syracuse
Share this story