Jim Souhan: Hoops program deserves a better fate

Minneapolis Community and Technical College has chosen not to fund the school's highly successful basketball program after the 2009-10 season. The school's Student Senate and Student Life Budget Committee decided that basketball was not a high priority, and school President Phil Davis accepted the recommendation to withdraw funding for the program.

I spoke with Davis, basketball coach Jay Pivec and faculty union President Tom Eland last week, and as you would expect of teachers and academicians, all offered gentle, reasoned explanations for their stances.

I'm a sports guy with little use for gentle, reasoned explanations, so I'll cut through the bureaucracy and well-framed arguments on both sides and tell you this:

Davis and MCTC are making a mistake.

I'm not a passionate follower of junior college basketball. I've attended two MCTC games in my life. I disagree with the dissolution of the program anyway, for a variety of reasons:

• MCTC shouldn't cut its most obvious symbol of excellence. If the basketball program failed on the court or failed to emphasize academics, then Davis would be right to cut the program. In reality, the basketball program is the only reason I know the school exists.

The team excels on the court -- it finished second in the nation this season -- and improves the lives and prospects of kids who might not otherwise find a reputable avenue to success.

If you're a boss, you don't mess with your best employees and symbols, and the basketball program is a beacon of excellence and a marketing tool all at once.

• The process stinks. Davis told me that he admired the way the SLBC researched, justified and arrived at its decision -- a 6-2 vote to discontinue funding for basketball -- and I'm sure the eight students were diligent, but since when did college students get to make decisions of this magnitude?

I chose to drive a lime-green Maverick in college. (Bad idea.) I chose to drink lots of beer and skip a few classes. (Bad idea, but lots of fun.) If the University of Missouri had allowed me to make any decisions that would affect the future of the school and its most successful programs, the school would no longer exist.

This is the inmates running the asylum. Actually, we don't require a metaphor. This is the students running the school, which is just as crazy.

Davis said it's natural for him to accept the students' recommendation because "they are our customers." I don't think President Davis would let the "customers" set his salary or determine his fate, though, do you?

• MCTC is not Harvard. It's not for those already on the fast track to success. It's for those who face challenges -- financial, social, academic or economic. The basketball program has excelled at taking challenged young athletes and putting them on the path to success. Pivec has saved and altered lives.

• Pivec and his staff have done wonderful work. His team is an annual powerhouse, and he has dedicated himself to producing true student-athletes who better themselves in the classroom.

Davis praised Pivec and the program but said budget cuts forced hard decisions, and that student surveys revealed higher priorities -- funds for cheaper mass transportation, health care and other programs.

Basketball is not more important than health care, but it is wrong to pretend that the two are mutually exclusive.

This is where leadership is required. Instead of finding creative means of keeping the basketball program alive, the students and Davis have doomed the school's best advertisement for itself.

"It's amazing -- here's an organization that only has brought great press to the college every year," he said. "The exposure that this program gives us in the community gets people interested in the school, and the coaches' emphasis on education and what they do for the kids is a real marketing tool for the college. That will be gone if this gets cut."

Eland, by the way, isn't a basketball fan. He just likes what the program does for his school, and the way Pivec has worked near-miracles with needy kids who might have found less respectable ways to pass their time if they hadn't played for MCTC.

Good leaders reward good work. Pivec, his program and his current and future players deserve better.