Harvard Falls an Athlete Short

At Harvard, the eight-semester rule says, very simply, that once you enroll you have eight semesters to graduate. They don't have to be consecutive, but that's all you get: eight semesters; four courses a semester; 32 courses to graduate.

"It would take something truly monumental to get someone a ninth semester," Sullivan said.

Because he had been in school in the fall of 2003 -- even though he never played a basketball game -- Cusworth had used up seven semesters at the end of last season. He appealed to the school to grant him a ninth semester, noting that he had not played in a game as a sophomore and that he was on schedule to graduate. The answer came back quickly: You have one semester left to play.

Cusworth consulted with Sullivan, who recommended he play fall semester. He would get to play more games that way; he would have a better chance to get invited to postseason camps to show scouts how much he had progressed as a player, and he would have enough games to appear in both league and national statistics. Cusworth agreed, which is why he had his Senior Night in January.

"It was a very weird feeling," Cusworth said. "There just wasn't any real closure to my career. You're supposed to build to the end of the season with your teammates and I didn't get to do it. As an athlete, you always think you're going to have some time after your last game to get ready to go out into the world, to deal with the end of being a college athlete. I didn't even get to sleep in my dorm before my last game."

Harvard told him he had to be out of the dorm by Thursday at noon because it needed rooms for transfer students and students returning from abroad who were going through orientation before classes began Monday. So, Cusworth's last three nights as a college basketball player were spent at a hotel.

"He really handled the whole thing well," Sullivan said. "I know it bothered him, but he never got down about it and he never let it affect his play. He obviously would have been first team all-Ivy if he'd been able to finish the season. [Cusworth was the league's second leading scorer when he had to shut down.] It was kind of fun to coach a fifth-year kid. I can see why other coaches love having them. There's clearly an extra level of maturity."

Sullivan has coached at Harvard for 16 seasons and has done one of the most underrated coaching jobs in the country. With tougher academic standards than any Ivy League school at a place where football and hockey are far more important than basketball, he has finished in the top half of the league seven times, once as high as second, and won a school-record 17 games one season.

"People just don't understand how good a coach Frank is," said Temple Coach Fran Dunphy, who, when he coached Penn, faced Sullivan for 16 years. "He's always got one hand tied behind his back, but his teams always manage to compete. I'm not sure how he does it."

He will have to do it the rest of this season without his best player because of the eight-semester rule. College presidents insist that their first priority when making rules or decisions is the welfare of the "student-athlete." By simply repeating the mantra of the rule and not taking into account the circumstances that faced Cusworth, Harvard let down someone who defines what a "student-athlete" is supposed to be.

It also let down all his teammates, who now have to play without him during the most important part of their season, and it let down the coach who recruited him with the promise that he was coming to a school (without an athletic scholarship) where his best interests would always be paramount. After all, what school could possibly care more about its students than Harvard?

The cop-out is that one exception can lead to others. If the other exceptions were stories such as Brian Cusworth's, then the more the merrier. There are times when rules should be broken.

Cusworth's case was one of those times. He deserved to celebrate his senior night with his fellow seniors. Not alone. Not in January. Not with 10 games left in the season.