The lies of Georgetown’s baseball team may not rank with those of Pete Rose, but Georgetown baseball recently did reveal its own institutionalized dishonesty. In 2000, the team moved to an off-campus field. Over a period of seven years, 26 players were told that they could count the hours spent on the upkeep of the field as work-study hours. Instead of recording hours actually spent working, each player reported that they had worked 20 hours per week, regardless of whether or not that was true.
After suspecting something was amiss, Georgetown self-reported the violations, running an independent investigation alongside an official investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA’s final ruling puts the entire Department of Athletics on probation for three years, and forces Georgetown to vacate all of the records involving the 26 players who were overpaid and to repay the $61,000 that was not actually earned by the players.
This embarrassing situation has cast a cloud of distrust over the baseball team and Georgetown’s former athletic director, Bernard Muir. Before this incident, Georgetown had no major NCAA violations.
Although the assistant coach who told his players that they could report a set number hours each week is most to blame, we must question the competence of an athletic director who allowed seven years of such dishonesty to occur unnoticed. We hope that the interim athletic director, Daniel R. Porterfield, will no longer hire coaches who actively go against the often-quoted moral ideals of the University.
More importantly, the incident with the baseball team must be kept in mind while the University searches for and eventually hires a permanent director. Any new management brought into Georgetown’s Department of Athletics must show its commitment to improve the overall culture of accountability by hiring competent, honest staff. The University’s reputation and the community’s respect for Georgetown’s athletics depend on it.
