All Is Not Well And Good With Duke Athletics

Of course no one really cares about football at Duke. That's because Krzyzewski built a national power in basketball, winning three national titles and reaching 10 Final Fours. Therefore, money continues to flow into the athletic department and people just makes jokes about the football team. Which must make it great fun to be a Duke football player: You get your head handed to you every Saturday and get laughed at the rest of the week.

But, the apologists argue, everybody graduates. Trust me when I tell you graduating from Duke isn't all that hard. What's hard is graduating AND representing the school well. The lacrosse team represented the school poorly off-the-field and the football team is an embarrassment on the field.

The football players aren't to blame for not being better football players. One can only hope that those playing lacrosse learned their lesson from the disaster of 2006. What's sad is that the adults appear to have learned nothing. Brodhead continues to do his Mr. Chips act, sending out lengthy e-mails to alums about how everything is going just fine now. Trask is still employed. Burness is still employed and so is Alleva. No one from Duke has apologized to the lacrosse kids for throwing them under the bus -- the kids are hardly victims here but the school chose to protect its image rather than its athletes -- and the entire athletic department is in disarray. People like me get angry mail from Duke people saying that, really, everything is just fine -- that it's the media (people like me) who are causing all these problems.

Not exactly.

Even Krzyzewski's basketball team slipped in 2007, losing in the first round of both the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament after nine straight years of reaching the final of the former and at least the Sweet Sixteen of the latter. Gail Goestenkors, the highly successful women's coach, fled to Texas after her team gagged in the round of sixteen against Rutgers. The women's lacrosse team just blew the biggest lead in NCAA Tournament history in losing to Virginia in the semifinals. Of course the women's golf team DID win a third straight national title. Maybe Dan Brooks, the women's golf coach, should succeed Alleva. Or Brodhead. Or both.

There is a lesson in all this: It isn't about over-zealous prosecutors or media running amok. It's a lesson about a society in which no one ever admits they're wrong (see G.W. Bush and R. Cheney as exhibits 1 and 1A), especially allegedly smart people. Smart people make mistakes too. Mistakes are forgivable -- but only after you admit them.

No one at Duke has admitted to a single mistake yet. Until they do so, they don't deserve forgiveness.