Harrick Travels Coast to Coast : He Deserves --and Receives --Another Chance

Last October, a university president named Robert Carothers became the first person in NCAA history to forfeit a college football game for reasons other than weather or disease.

He did so because his team had been fighting at a fraternity house.

“This is not about football . . . this is about character,” Carothers said at the time.

On Monday, that same university president became the first man to give Jim Harrick another job.

Oddly enough, he said this was also about character.

Oddly enough, he was right.

The first decision spoke to the character of a society that should be unafraid to hold people accountable.

This latest decision speaks to the character of a society that must also be willing to forgive.

Do not rip Carothers and Rhode Island for giving Harrick another chance.

Thank them, because one day the person needing another chance could be you.

“In our Judeo-Christian tradition, proud men who are humbled should be able to use the opportunity to learn and grow and serve again,” Carothers said in a phone interview Monday before the news conference announcing Harrick’s hiring. “The question I wrestled with was whether Jim Harrick had learned the lessons that the consequences of his actions ought to have taught him. I decided he had.”

You might think this to be a lot of gobbledygook that translates:

“The guy won a national title two years ago, we’ll never again get him this cheap, let’s go for it.”

Did Harrick deserve to be fired from UCLA for general sleaziness? You read it here first.

Is Rhode Island seeking the publicity that would help it build a new on-campus arena? Absolutely.

Would the basketball-mad school be taking this chance on an exiled football coach? Get real.

But if you met Carothers, you would understand.

He is a sports fan, but no more than he is a literature fan.

He has been a basketball player . . . and a poet.

After taking his current job in 1991, he decried Rhode Island’s reputation as a party school and banned alcohol on campus.

“Civility is everything that we are about,” he said at the time of the football incident. “I wanted to make clear our standard of behavior here.” He broke new ground in that incident. Six players had entered a frat house and beaten up several members while 25 players stood outside in support of their teammates.

Carothers investigated the ambush on his own. He suspended players and canceled the weekend game long before anyone was charged with a crime.

Some said Carothers was the one who was acting barbaric. But five of the players involved have since been convicted of criminal activity.

Carothers was not just righteous, he was right, and was lauded by sensible minds nationwide.

He broke new ground with Jim Harrick too.

Like, you’ve heard of a university president putting a botany professor and theater department chairman on a basketball coach search committee?

“I wanted some people who didn’t know a lot about athletes, who could look the new coach in the eye and see something different,” Carothers said.

Like, you’ve heard of a university president seeking a reference from a janitor?

“Yeah, I called Pauley Pavilion and talked to someone working the floor,” he said. “I wanted to talk to people who knew the scuttlebutt at the ground level.”

There’s that word, “scuttlebutt.”

Since Harrick’s firing, there has been plenty of gossip around town about Harrick’s character. All of it mean, and none of it proven.

We have not mentioned it, and would not mention it here if the Rhode Island folks hadn’t admitted that it troubled them.

That Harrick lied about an expense report and was fired by a major university? That did not bother Carothers once he met Harrick.

“He sat in front of me with all the factual material and did not deny one bit of it,” Carothers said.

The rumors, Harrick denied. Which didn’t stop Carothers from investigating them, and everything else about Harrick.

“He seemed like a very good man who made one very bad mistake,” Carothers said. “But I had to be sure for myself, I just had to be sure. So I looked.”

And found no scuttlebutt.

Nothing from the janitor, nothing from a team trainer, nothing even from outgoing UCLA Chancellor Charles Young, the man who fired Harrick.

What Carothers said he found was a coach with an unblemished record before last fall.

A coach who had paid a serious price for getting caught.

Harrick would have had a chance to win a national championship next year with UCLA--Baron Davis had originally agreed to play for him, remember.

Instead, he will toil in the Atlantic 10 with a team that plays in a 4,000-seat arena and is dwarfed by the Big East school in neighboring Providence.

He has gone from the top of the college basketball world to the lower middle, for less money, and only after a season in exile.

The time has been served.

So the marriage is a little like that of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett. So there will be many who think Harrick will last only a couple of years before self-destructing again.

The new Rhode Island coach should know that this nice man who hired him will not hesitate to chase him down the street and throw him headfirst into the Atlantic if he screws up.

Good luck with this second chance, Harrick.

Make Robert Carothers look bad, and see how many people will give you another one.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Comparing The Numbers

Seasons in Division I as coach, program

HARRICK: 17

RHODE ISLAND: 91

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NCAA Tournament berths

HARRICK: 12

RHODE ISLAND: 6

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Overall winning percentage

HARRICK: .691

RHODE ISLAND: .588

*

NCAA titles

HARRICK: 1

RHODE ISLAND: 0