Florida Atlantic Should Close the Jarvis Deal
by Jay Pearlman
I was visiting a friend in West Palm ten or so years ago, and with a few minutes to kill in Boca Raton stopped to look at the gym at Florida Atlantic University (ok, so I’m a bit of a junkie). When I parked and walked in, everyone in and near the building was talking about one thing: Howard Schnellenberger was on his way to FAU to build a football program. And visions of wins over Miami, Florida and Florida State danced in their eyes. Well, it’s not quite as dramatic as that – yet – but by hiring Mike Jarvis to run his basketball program, FAU Athletic Director Craig Angelos could well be setting the stage for basketball wins over those programs never achieved by his football team.
As readers of this space know, sometimes we admire coaches – and television analysts – from afar; that’s not the case here. I’ve known Mike since my undergraduate days at Harvard, where he was the lead assistant for Tom “Satch” Sanders. Of course, Jarvis would later return to Cambridge Rindge to bring Patrick Ewing to Boston, send Ewing along to Georgetown without packaging himself in a “deal” with Coach Thompson, and then return to the colleges as head coach of Boston University, George Washington and St. John’s. And while success at the first two of those three (and initial success at St. John’s) did not lead to a return to glory for the former Redmen, those of you who read this space regularly know that that’s much more about dormitories than it is about coaching.
When my editor called me Friday in northern Florida to tell me that Andy Katz reported Jarvis close to being named at FAU, I called Mike by cell phone (reaching him at the cashier at a Circuit City in Boca). Mike and I had not spoken since he was in the “final two” for the Harvard job thirteen months ago, though I sent along a good-luck message when he was considered last month at James Madison in the CAA. I’ve always known Mike to be one of the brightest coaches in America, and I could tell in our phone conversation that he has more fire in his 60s than he’s had at any other time since I know him. He’s excited about the prospect of starting at FAU, about building a mid-major juggernaut, about everything this side of playing in a conference stretching from Florida to Denver. FAU will be fortunate to get a coach of Mike’s ability and stature, and from all reports Craig Angelos knows it.
As a former NCAA compliance officer, Angelos doesn’t need input from me about vetting Jarvis. But as Mike’s friend, a former college assistant, and a lawyer in New York when Jarvis’ tenure ended at St. John’s, I am particularly equipped to address two issues about which Jarvis was vilified by New York’s radio and other sports media: recruiting, and that player-supervision issue in Pittsburgh a month or more after he left St. John’s.
First, it shows how silly the press can be when a coach (no, former coach) can be criticized in the same breath both for not recruiting good enough athletes, and for those he has recruited not being good enough citizens. Because let’s face it, with Bill Bradleys and Jim McMillans few and far between, every coach in America knows that in bringing the best athletes on earth into a university, inevitably a coach creates some risk of imperfect citizenship. So criticize Jarvis – any coach – about the athleticism of the players he’s recruited OR about the citizenship of those players, but don’t criticize him about both.
Second, on recruiting. As indicated in this space recently in connection with current St. John’s coach Norm Roberts, early in Mike’s tenure in Queens St. John’s opened dormitories, effectively ending the recruiting advantage of a commuter school in giving players “rent equivalents” calculated based on average rentals within an awfully expensive radius of campus (combined with local players living at home early in college, and then five or six sharing apartments later on for $100 each a month). Absent such payments permitted under NCAA rules, the well Coach Carnesecca drank from dried up. And if you were the best player coming out of New York’s Catholic League, absent financial incentive would you rather go to school in Chapel Hill, or on the corner of Union Turnpike and the Grand Central Parkway?
Finally, there were the goings-on in Pittsburgh. Initially, while the players involved were in fact recruited by Jarvis, the event for which Mike was criticized by the New York press took place a month or six weeks after he left St. John’s. And while a player or two did in fact have a problem beginning in a Pittsburgh dance bar following a conference game (an old head coach of mine told me that “all the things that can happen on the road are bad”), what happened that night was theft-of-services, not rape. So even putting aside the responsibility of Mike’s successor coaching staff to set and enforce curfew on the road, yes some of the players found themselves in a dance bar. Ok, that’s not the worst offense in history. And when one of the dancers agreed to return with the players to their hotel – for a fee – in order to provide more private entertainment, well whatever your personal morality, that’s not the first time in history that has happened. What happened – and ultimately the reason the event became public – is that the dancer in question was such a poor businesswoman that she didn’t require payment in advance (we’re beyond my expertise here, but even lawyers charge initial retainers). So when the young lady was finished, well, the players were dissatisfied with the services provided, apparently dissatisfied enough to withhold payment. In short, they stiffed her. And while the young lady in question cried rape, what she really meant was theft-of-services. Of course, if she’d required payment up front, the “theft” could never have happened. The key point: notwithstanding all of the screaming on drive-time sports radio in New York City, no one raped anyone.
When I spoke to Coach Jarvis on Friday, he made clear that in this business, nothing is done until it’s done, and also that approvals at more than one level were required before the FAU folks could formally extend an offer. Recognizing the prejudice caused by my knowing Mike for over thirty years, this writer implores Coach Angelos and others at Florida Atlantic to cross their T’s, dot their I’s, and quickly extend an offer to one of the brightest and most talented coaches in America. And then for Angelos to allow himself the briefest smile at the thought of a win or two over Miami, Florida or Florida State, and the building of a basketball program that competes for a championship year in and year out in the Sun Belt Conference.
