NCCU's sacrificial players

The most venerated saying in sports is not "Are you sure these steroids can't be detected?" but "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." That was first spoken, no doubt, by a coach whose overmatched team was being pummeled by Duke 155-23. At halftime.

Henry Dickerson, the men's basketball coach at N.C. Central University, has had to remind his players of that axiom many times this season and will have to say it for the next several years.

Yo, Hank. Here's a tip: Just have it printed on cards and hand them out as the team trudges back into the locker room after yet another humiliating defeat.

Not humiliating to the coach or the team. Oh no. Coach Dickerson and his gallant but overmatched hoopsters have comported themselves through a predictably nightmarish season with grace -- or as much grace as one can muster after you've just been throttled 105-51 in some far-flung locale.

Unfortunately for vengeance-lovers, the administrators responsible for sending them have already split. Then-Chancellor James Ammons and then-Athletic Director Bill Hayes were the masterminds behind the university's leap into Division I sports.

If I could get my hands on them, I'd force them to watch, over and over, the scene from "On the Waterfront" in which Marlon Brando scolds his older brother. "You wuz my brudda, Charlie. You shudda looked out for me. ... I cudda had a class. I cudda been a contenda."

The NCCU Eagles perhaps cudda been contenders in the CIAA or even the MEAC, but they left one and haven't yet been accepted into the other. Thus, they've become the basketball equivalent of those pro rasslin' dudes who you know are going to lose even before the bell rings.

Dickerson is a former professional player in the now-defunct American Basketball Association and thus is no stranger to lost causes. That's why he calls the season, despite the lopsided defeats, "an overwhelmingly positive experience" for his players, both culturally and educationally.

"It wouldn't be [a positive experience] if I were degrading them because they aren't winning. Our team motto is 'The greater the trial, the greater the glory,' " he said.

My question, then, is how come the players can't face those great trials in, say, San Diego instead of Akron, Ohio?

Ammons, when I talked to him near the end of 2005, said the move would attract top scholars to the school. He didn't even laugh when he said it.

Even though Coach Dickerson said the move is all good, I can't help feeling -- as do some Eagles alums from whom I've heard -- that NCCU appears to be sacrificing these young men at the altar of greed: The school agrees to play a larger, wealthier school that needs a cupcake to pad its schedule, and the school in turn agrees to pad NCCU's bank account.

That stinks.

What also stinks is that both Ammons and Hayes flew the coop to Florida A&M University -- Stevie Wonder could've seen that coming -- soon after consigning the next several years of NCCU athletic recruits to humiliating defeats for the sake of a few coins. OK, for the sake of a lot of coins: at least $400,000.

If the school were scheduling games with the University of Hawaii, that would be one thing. Fargo, N.D., though, is way too far to go to get whipped 104-51.

At least I hear the North Dakota chapter of the NCCU Alumni Association honored the players as they came onto the court. I hear he gave them a standing ovation.