Forget Perception That Folks At Gu Follow Straight Path

There is a quaint notion that college is where you go to have your beliefs challenged, your suppositions turned inside out.

At Gonzaga University, it’s actually true.

For example, press conferences are called at Gonzaga for the express purpose of not answering questions. They tell you so when you walk in the door.

After 13 months of grim burlesque, Fitzgate was brought to a predictably hollow conclusion this past week. The educrats of Jesuit Tech once again summoned the media to ask questions that would not be answered, their voices conveniently muted by a legal agreement by both sides not to discuss details of the case.

So we know little more than we did before - other than a dollar figure, which is both considerable and meaningless.

To review:

Dan Fitzgerald, the former athletic director and basketball coach, did his old school wrong by slipping about $28,000 a year past the exchequer and back into the athletic program.

A few folks at the school did wrong by making it easy for him to do this - making them enablers, unwitting or otherwise.

The NCAA weighed all the evidence and shrugged.

For the next four years, GU will have to live with the echo of Big Brother saying, “Tsk, tsk.”

Though its standards for institutional control and ethical conduct weren’t met, the NCAA obviously saw this for what it was: a beef between Fitzgerald and his employer. That NCAA gumshoes got involved at all is due to the numbing proliferation of gobbledygook in the operating manual, the bible of a society that can’t trust itself.

If a mechanic siphons money from the till to buy himself a better set of tools, the boss has grounds to fire him. But it’s not going to raise a stink in the automobile industry.

Those tools aren’t going to turn an old Buick into a new Bentley.

The NCAA’s report did make for some entertaining reading, primarily for its curious way with the language. For instance, it had Fitzgerald “routinely destroying” financial records, as if he had a shredder on his credenza. What he had was an aversion to receipts even stronger than his aversion to behind-the-back passes. A terrible accountant anyway, in this case he was terrible on purpose - and deceitful.

It also said Fitzgerald “misappropriated” $199,874, which is simply the wrong word. He appropriated it - took it improperly, without permission - but not for bad or dishonest purposes. Unless banners in the gym and the full allowance of meal money for players are bad and dishonest.

The NCAA doesn’t make it a practice to accept this kind of stuff on faith. It pored over GU’s exhaustive interviews with players, former players, coaches and administrators. In lieu of those missing receipts, there was an audit of Fitzgerald’s finances and stacks of affidavits from those with knowledge, if not specifics, of how money was spent.

The NCAA was satisfied the money, wherever it went, didn’t produce a competitive advantage.

Gonzaga, however grudgingly, must have been satisfied the money didn’t go into Fitzgerald’s pocket or else it would have him in court this very minute. Surely the school would not have offered him reassignment, as it did last December, if it thought him a thief.

Neither the math nor the language make Fitzgerald look good, but it didn’t look good 13 months ago.

What the disposition of the case did was make the school look just as bad, or worse.

With dubious logic, the lawyers propped up the school’s new president, Fr. Robert Spitzer, and had him “respectfully disagree” with the NCAA’s findings that GU bean counters were asleep at the spreadsheet.

“We had at that time in place reasonable controls,” Spitzer said.

Reasonable?

More than $115,000 of the diverted money came from reimbursements from the West Coast Conference, in which GU does its athletic business. Portions of the reimbursement policy are outlined in the WCC handbook, which sits on the desk of GU vice president Harry Sladich - or should, seeing as he’s supposedly the overseer of the athletic department.

Sladich said he knew of the reimbursement procedure “belatedly - when it became evident in the course of the investigation.”

This is about one step up from Sgt. Schultz, no?

The school also insured a used car Fitzgerald purchased for recruiting purposes with money out of his secret account. Anybody think to ask where this car came from?

And according to the NCAA, about $3,000 a year of this secret stash consisted of cash from gate receipts, parking fees and program sales. Was the safe in Fitzgerald’s office? Just curious.

For the sake of closure - and his own credibility - it would be prudent of Spitzer to search off campus for a new athletic director, and elsewhere on campus for someone to oversee athletics.

In the meantime, remember this.

Confronted with his 16-year deception, Fitzgerald admitted everything. What he confessed - and what he denied - are exactly what came to light in the NCAA’s report 13 months later.

Meanwhile, confronted with either their own ineptitude or involvement, other principals went into full dodge.

That should put an end to whatever quaint notions we’ve ever had about Gonzaga University.