Commentary : It’s Not Black and White, but Wrong or Right

From the day Len Bias died, it seemed safe to make one assumption about the University of Maryland’s basketball program: It had no place to go but up. Three years later, however, Maryland basketball is still on the basement floor. Players have transferred, at least one has flunked out, others have dropped out of sight mysteriously, the NCAA is checking into possible rules violations, and the team was awful on the court last season. The man taking the heat for all this is the man who ought to take it -- the head coach, Bob Wade.

But there are those who think Wade is being treated unfairly, specifically because he is black and the vast majority of his critics are white. A group of black Maryland delegates made a big deal out of supporting Wade, as did the Black Faculty and Staff Association at the university, which called a rally for him last week in College Park. Those groups see Wade as the object of a witch-hunt, a black coach being worked over needlessly by the local news media and a bunch of racists.

For those groups to make this a racial issue is wrong. There are people who labor under very real racial discrimination on various levels every day in the workplace. But to suggest that it’s racist to critically look at the coach of a team that’s as troubled as Wade’s is ludicrous. Anytime a coach is under NCAA and university investigation because his staff supposedly knowingly violated a rule, that coach has questions to answer no matter what color he is. If the same set of circumstances existed at Maryland under a white coach, would he be under fire? Of course. So the same rules should apply to Wade.

I’m not about to say there aren’t some biased boosters at the University of Maryland, some of whom probably resented Wade’s presence the moment he stepped on campus. And it’s not difficult to understand why there is such blind support coming from those Maryland delegates and black faculty members, many of whom are old enough to remember that 30 years ago, black students weren’t even welcome at the University of Maryland. After all, Wade is the first black man to coach a major sport in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

But Wade created most of his own problems. From all indications he has been largely uncooperative with many people within the university, hasn’t done much -- if anything -- to get the support of the Terrapin Club and now has the nerve to expect unquestioning support when he is in trouble. That’s not racism, it’s a total lack of public-relations skill.

As far as the university goes, it is the job of the athletic director to support Wade. Up to a point. It is not the job of the AD or his department to put a pretty face on Wade’s problems. In fact, it’s the duty of Lew Perkins and his staff to oversee the basketball program, to provide the checks and balances.

The athletic department didn’t recruit Rudy Archer, who has flunked out, or Rodney Walker, whose mysterious departure still goes without explanation. Wade and his assistant coaches recruited them. Considering the problems in the program when he followed Driesell into the job, Wade doesn’t have that big a margin for error with recruits or their progress toward a degree.

Anyway, the whole Rudy Archer mess could have been avoided. If Wade believes there’s nothing wrong with giving Archer a ride to class -- because after all, this is a kid who’s got no shot at an NBA career, who ought to be in class every day of his natural life -- all he had to do was come out and say, “Look, my intention was to get this kid to class, and to hell with a stupid NCAA rule.” Even if the NCAA slapped him and Maryland on the wrist, public sentiment (and probably the media’s) would have been overwhelmingly pro-Wade.

It’s not really surprising Wade isn’t getting the support he’d like from the Terrapin Club. He knew when he took this job many of those folks were Lefty supporters. If it’s important now that the group support him, it should have been important enough that Wade work to get that support sometime over the last three years.

Wade is right about the newspapers not supporting him. It’s not our function to support. We are not a public-relations arm of the university. It’s a newspaper’s job to report what is happening on a daily basis, whether it’s Lefty Driesell, Bobby Ross or Bob Wade.

So, while Wade’s supporters were telling us to look the other way, the NCAA investigators made their way onto campus where they now are checking into matters besides Archer’s means of transportation. Wade and Perkins aren’t getting along and the basketball team is coming off a wretched season. It doesn’t sound like the program has moved one inch since 1986. Is evrybody supposed to sit by and say, Bob Wade is doing a great job, or else be accused of being a racist? That’s intolerable, particularly in a metropolitan area where so many black coaches -- John Thompson, Wes Unseld, Frank Robinson, A.B. Williamson, Ed Tapscott -- run a tight ship and are highly respected for what they do.