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| Tuesday, October 7 'Those kids are getting a better shake now' By Tom Farrey ESPN.com |
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ODANAH, Wis. -- At Bad River Tribal School in northwest Wisconsin, the teenage students in Jan Gangelhoff's class each morning pass around an eagle feather, a Chippewa ritual meant to encourage the telling of the truth. For Gangelhoff, who became a tribal elder in July, being forthright is more than a noble abstraction.
"Sometimes I think that many, many people in Minnesota, to this day, even given all the evidence, believe that he didn't do it," Gangelhoff says. "That he didn't know about it." The NCAA Committee on Infractions decided otherwise, however. Haskins was cited for knowing of the academic fraud in his basketball program, most of which centered on Gangelhoff's admission to a St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter that, as a tutor to the players, she wrote some 400 papers, take-home tests and other assignments for 20 Gopher men's basketball players from 1994 to 1998. Haskins initially was given a $1.5 million buyout of his contract, but agreed to give back $800,000 of the money after the university learned of his awareness of the academic fraud. He is still out of the game and living in Kentucky, a remarkable plunge for a coach who as recently as 1997 had taken his team to the Final Four. Pardon Gangelhoff if she feels no pity for Haskins, who at least did not face federal criminal charges, as she did after her moment of conscience. As the complaint read, in intimidatingly plain language:
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff,
Defendant. Prosecutors alleged that she had helped defraud the government of Pell Grant funds by improperly keeping athletes eligible for college. Sensing a mismatch -- "How could I defend myself when I said I did it?" -- she copped to the felony before the trial, hoping to avoid prison time. But a judge threw out the plea, leaving the impression that it was a case unworthy of the government's time. She now lives on a desolate, 124,000-acre reservation that lines Lake Superior, five hours by car from the Twin Cities and even farther away in terms of culture. Only one person has asked her about the Minnesota scandal since she moved to this land of rice fields, she says. And it wasn't the person who hired her to teach at the 34-person school. She calls the quiet, trusting atmosphere exactly what she needed after the media onslaught of 1999. During that time, her tiny hometown of Danbury, Wis., was flush with reporters. She said she felt like a prisoner, needing a security escort to duck out of the casino where she worked. Even then-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, piled on, blaming Gangelhoff and the St. Paul newspaper for creating a distraction for the Gophers, who at the time of the story's publication were preparing for the NCAA Tournament.
"I probably would be institutionalized if it weren't for my family and friends," she says. "They kept me grounded. They supported me no matter what I was going through. They validated what I did and how I felt." For a while, she wondered if she did the right thing by coming clean, taking down Haskins and five years' worth of Gopher victories in the process. Not anymore. Not when she reads how current coach Dan Monson seems to be taking the student-athlete concept seriously; at least four players, including former star Joel Przybilla, were dismissed or chose to leave the program after failing to meet academic obligations. "I can't say that there's nothing that I would change, but I would do it (blow the whistle) again," she says. "I just think those kids are getting a better shake now." Tom Farrey is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn3.com. |
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