Paul Wieland

The Father...the Son...and the Sweet Sixteen: a College's Basketball Disaster Paul Wieland

There has never been a college sports scandal quite like the one at tiny St. Bonaventure University. The school's president was caught fixing grades on a basketball player after admitting him with only a welding certificate from a junior college. The university had once been a national power in college basketball, and a president with grand ideas for a return to the top corrupted his school's academics to reach that aim. He also made sure his son was an assistant basketball coach. In the end, the school's athletic director was the only hero, and the chairman of the university board of trustees committed suicide with his note saying he had "failed St. Bonaventure." The Father?the Son?and the Sweet Sixteeen is an inside look at the scandal and how it happened, and a cautionary tale about the venality of big time college athletics.