Garrison Keillor didn’t tell the joke himself. Two members of his crew did, on a recent broadcast of “Prairie Home Companion,” which opens each week with Keillor’s reminder that his fictional Minnesota hometown of Lake Wobegon is populated by strong women, good-looking men and children who are above average.
Q: How many basketball players does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The entire team, and they all get a semester’s credit for it.
The live audience in St. Paul responded with a mixture of boos, groans, laughter and applause. The reaction was a measure of how deeply the still unfolding University of Minnesota basketball scandal has stung the psyche of a state that likes to think it embodies the values Keillor salutes in his depiction of simpler times.
All that is Golden Gopher may not glitter. It has been a huge pill to swallow for Minnesotans. On the eve of the NCAA tournament in mid-March, the St. Paul Pioneer Press published allegations by a former secretary in the university’s academic counseling unit who said she prepared hundreds of term papers and did other course work, including take-home exams, for current and former players over a period of five years. The accuser, Jan Gangelhoff, has said her labors had the blessing of coach Clem Haskins, a popular figure in the community.
Four players were suspended on the spot, virtually guaranteeing the Gophers’ first-round loss to Gonzaga. Gov. Jesse Ventura body-slammed the Pioneer Press for breaking the story when it did, one of many kill-the-messenger rumblings along the banks of the upper Mississippi.
State legislators, who control the university’s budget, summoned school President Mark Yudof to the capitol to debrief them. NCAA officials launched an investigation, as did the university, which hired an outside firm. Results of those probes are not expected to be released before early fall.
This is not the first time Minnesota basketball’s reputation has been besmirched. But the systematic practice of academic fraud, if proved, would be on another level.
While there has been some griping (“Why don’t they pick on those Big Schools Out East?”), most people simply seem perturbed to discover that their shining flagship institution might have such a low-life problem. It runs against the grain of what Yudof, a Texas transplant, calls “Minnesota exceptionalism”–a conviction that the state has a special standard for itself.
The Twin Cities have gone back about their business while they wait for the other gym shoe to drop. But if the allegations are substantiated, no one denies the splash will send ripples spreading in more than a few of Minnesota’s celebrated 10,000 lakes.
More than most states, Minnesota’s heart belongs to what is simply referred to as “The U.” With 40,000 students clustered just a 2-mile jog from the state capitol and one of the country’s most functional and pleasant downtowns, town and gown are integrated here in a way that most large state institutions are not. Nearly two-thirds of the U’s alumni settle in the seven-county metro area.
“When something good happens at the university, everyone celebrates, and when something bad happens, it’s as if it happened to someone in your own family,” said City Coordinator Kathleen O’Brien, Minneapolis’ top appointed official.
O’Brien’s boss, second-term Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, said she and other political leaders are confident Yudof has taken the right steps to address the scandal. Although there is a palpable sense of disappointment, Sayles Belton said she and others are trying to focus on the bright side.
“The University of Minnesota is going on with its core business and its core business is to educate thousands of students,” she said. “The sports piece is a small piece. Yes, it captures our attention, but it’s only one dimension of the university’s relationship to the community and what it offers to the public.”
Maintaining that kind of perspective is what Minnesota communications professor Ed Schiappa calls “a psychological balancing act: How do you balance your positive feelings about the university with your negative feelings about the scandal?”
Schiappa, who teaches a course in popular culture, draws a parallel with parenting. “You do as you do when your child does something you don’t like–take disciplinary measures, but don’t question the fundamental goodness of the institution,” he said.
More spankings are unlikely to come before the results of the investigations are released, although university Vice President Sandra Gardebring said it is possible the academic counseling office could be restructured.
On and off campus, the chief topic of speculation is whether Haskins will survive the scandal. Last week the student-run Minnesota Daily published an editorial calling for the coach to resign.
“Clem hasn’t really talked to the public, but what he has said is that he’s going to stick it out and not be a quitter,” editor-in-chief Nick Doty said. “It seems inevitable that he will not be able to maintain credibility with recruits. It would be more honorable for him to resign.”
Past scandals have contributed to the demise of two other Minnesota basketball coaches: Bill Musselman, whose exit was hastened by a vicious brawl between the Gophers and Ohio State in 1972, and Jim Dutcher, who resigned after three of his players were charged with sexually assaulting a Madison, Wis., woman in 1986. (The players were ultimately acquitted.) Haskins succeeded Dutcher, took the team to its first Final Four in 1997 and has 240 victories, five short of the school record.
Because the Gophers are the state’s sole Division I basketball team, they receive heavy media coverage. Haskins, with his rural background and up-by-the-bootstraps life story, resonated with residents here.
“Being a Minnesotan means more than just living in a place–it connotes a hard work ethic, a strong sense of loyalty to the community, personal integrity, straightforwardness and candor,” O’Brien said. “People felt an affinity with Clem because they felt he shared those values.”
Bad news continues to dribble out, the latest being a university auditor’s catch of a $9,000 golf boondoggle involving Haskins and his staff. It was portrayed as a coaching seminar and paid for by a local booster club.
University officials such as Gardebring are concerned about the impact the larger controversy could have on a $1 billion capital fundraising campaign set for launch this fall. But even if Haskins is forced out and NCAA sanctions are levied against the basketball program, people are trying not to view the situation as apocalyptic.
“The vast majority of people here don’t come here because of the basketball team,” said Minnesota Daily senior reporter Scott Larson, who is covering the scandal. “They come here to get a good education.”
