86 Madison Scandal?

[ditt1605]

Can anyone fill me in as to what the '86 "Madison scandal" was? From what I gathered from the John Shasky article, it sounds like a big deal (players kicked off team, Coach quit), but I don't think I ever heard of it until just now. I couldn't find anything on the internet other than Dutcher quit mid season out of protest. I've heard of the violations under Musselman and was in school for Clems so I thought it was weird that this never came up before.

 

[bga1]

The team had just beaten Wisky at Wisky on a buzzer beater by Todd Alexander to go 3-3 for the year and things were looking promising. They went out to party afterwards. Mitch Lee, George Williams and Kevin Smith hooked up with a girl who claimed to have been raped by all three. It was such a huge scandal that we forfeited the coming weekend game with Northwestern and Dutcher resigned due to his dispair over the situation. Lee had been a previous bad actor having been accused of rape prior, and getting off free. The night he returned to the team he showed up at the game with a champaign glass shaved into his head which should have been a portent of bad news to come. There were plenty of other tales about Lee's behavior and Dutcher certainly regretted not getting rid of him atfter the first alleged rape. As the investigation ensued, Todd Alexander was also soomehow involved and all four were kicked off the team decimatingthe squad for the year.

Jimmy Williams coached the rest of the year. Then they cleaned house and brought in Clem who had to field a horrible team the next year before developing a nice batch of Dutcher's last recruits- Newbern, Burton and Schikenjanski.

 

[97alumni]

Can anyone fill me in as to what the '86 "Madison scandal" was? From what I gathered from the John Shasky article, it sounds like a big deal (players kicked off team, Coach quit), but I don't think I ever heard of it until just now. I couldn't find anything on the internet other than Dutcher quit mid season out of protest. I've heard of the violations under Musselman and was in school for Clems so I thought it was weird that this never came up before.

I think that might be the rape scandal when they pulled our players off the plane before it took off. If I also remember my Dad telling me that after that happened - the next game we played Ohio State who was ranked at the time at the Barn. We had a bunch of freshman left on the team and beat them. I guess the crowd never sat down the entire game.

 

[Gopher4Life]

From Wikipedia:

On January 25, 1986, three Gopher players were arrested on rape charges in Madison, Wisconsin. A Madison woman claimed the players raped her at their team hotel hours after the Gophers played the Wisconsin Badgers. The entire team and coaching staff, including Dutcher, was detained at Dane County Regional Airport for questioning. After the arrests, U of M officials canceled the Gophers' next scheduled game, against Northwestern, citing the arrests and a series of less serious incidents prior to the arrests. Feeling the decision was unfair, Dutcher resigned; he'd already planned to retire after the 1985-86 season. All three players were ultimately acquitted.

 

[Hates Monikers]

BGA said Dutcher resigned "due to his dispair over the situation." G4L said "feeling the decision was unfair, Dutcher resigned." I remember news accounts at the time reporting it more the way BGA noted. I think I remember someone quoting Dutcher second hand as telling Paul Giel that "I can't do this again." As the years have passed, I have seen/heard more references to G4L's post, with Dutcher resigning over the way the U handled it. I have no idea which is correct.

 

[Bad Gopher]

Todd Alexander was indeed dismissed from the team, but I'm not sure the reason was related to the scandal. I may be mistaken, but there it have been an unrelated violation of team rules. On the other hand, do I recall correctly that he might have known what was going on in that hotel room and, although declining to participate, didn't report it either? My memory is foggy.

 

[Dr.Don]

G4L's memory best sums it up. I was embarrassed to be a Gopher fan for awhile after the Mitch Lee debacle. This time, I agree with G4L, his/her memory is intact. This was more embarrassing than the Clem debacle, because it dealt with so called accusations of rape and sexual abuse.....then the champagne haircut put the mustard on the dressing...bad scene.

By the way, Dutcher resigned because he "can't take any more of this." In other words, he had had enough of the behavior of college jocks thinking they were above the team. Dutch is and/or was still one of the best play by play guys announcing Gopher BB.

And if memory serves me correctly, Todd Alexander went and transferred to a Texas school and got into trouble there too.

 

[Lincoln gopher]

The team had just beaten Wisky at Wisky on a buzzer beater by Todd Alexander to go 3-3 for the year and things were looking promising. They went out to party afterwards. Mitch Lee, George Williams and Kevin Smith hooked up with a girl who claimed to have been raped by all three. It was such a huge scandal that we forfeited the coming weekend game with Northwestern and Dutcher resigned due to his dispair over the situation. Lee had been a previous bad actor having been accused of rape prior, and getting off free. The night he returned to the team he showed up at the game with a champaign glass shaved into his head which should have been a portent of bad news to come. There were plenty of other tales about Lee's behavior and Dutcher certainly regretted not getting rid of him atfter the first alleged rape. As the investigation ensued, Todd Alexander was also soomehow involved and all four were kicked off the team decimatingthe squad for the year.

Jimmy Williams coached the rest of the year. Then they cleaned house and brought in Clem who had to field a horrible team the next year before developing a nice batch of Dutcher's last recruits- Newbern, Burton and Schikenjanski.

They did clean house, but I do know 1 coach that stayed on from the Dutcher staff to the Haskins staff and that was Coach Kozmoski. He was a grad assistant uder Dutcher and stayed on Haskins staff for years. He did leave well before the Haskins scandal broke. Still coaching at St. Olaf.

 

[Maroon92]

Iron 5

My memory is foggy also --why were their only 5 left-- I don't recall what happened to the rest of them to get down to that number.

Can anyone recall which football players joined the team to help out. I thought there was a big guy from the FB team that was a local kid (Fridley?) that was fun to watch

 

[Holy Man]

Madison Scandal

My memory is pretty clear on this one. I do not remember "despair" as the reason Dutch resigned, although it may have been unspoken. He resigned because he thought the players did not get due process, and the rest of the team was being punished for the actions of a few. He resigned in protest of the university's decision to forfeit the Northwestern game.

All three of the players in question were acquitted of a crime. But acquittal and innocence are not the same thing. In the aftermath, two of the three players were bitter about how the university handled it. One, Kevin Smith (probably the best of the three players), came back with real remorse, and acknowledged the wrongdoing he was part of. To my knowledge, he turned his life around and is a productive citizen in Michigan (Detroit?) where he came from. Lee had a pro career in Latin America, where I think one of our regular posters ran into him years ago. I never heard what happened to Williams.

Alexander was booted a few days later for stealing credit cards or something.

It was the darkest moment in Gopher history before Ganglegate. Both are ugly, but Madison is probably worse because of the nature of what happened.

It made for an intense night the next week with the Iron Five, and knocking off a ranked OSU team.

 

[nooram]

FB players - Roselle Richardson and Tim Juneau

 

[bga1]

Todd Alexander was indeed dismissed from the team, but I'm not sure the reason was related to the scandal. I may be mistaken, but there it have been an unrelated violation of team rules. On the other hand, do I recall correctly that he might have known what was going on in that hotel room and, although declining to participate, didn't report it either? My memory is foggy.

You recall correctly. He knew.

 

[Jim V2]

My memory is pretty clear on this one. I do not remember "despair" as the reason Dutch resigned, although it may have been unspoken. He resigned because he thought the players did not get due process, and the rest of the team was being punished for the actions of a few. He resigned in protest of the university's decision to forfeit the Northwestern game.

All three of the players in question were acquitted of a crime. But acquittal and innocence are not the same thing. In the aftermath, two of the three players were bitter about how the university handled it.

My memory is pretty clear too, and Holy Man is right on. The issue was due process/forfeit. But as John Shasky noted in his interview, there were alarm bells going off beforehand because of Dutch's lack of discipline enforcement. (Dutch looked for the good in people, and felt that if you treated players like adults, they'd behave that way. He was disappointed and hurt when the players didn't meet that standard. And it was clear that regardless of whether a rape occurred, the players in question were misbehaving.) I've no doubt that he could have expressed his frustration with the situation by saying he didn't want to go through this again.

I'm less clear on the Todd Alexander deal, although credit cards and going to a school in Texas and finding more trouble sound right. I also remember something about an ATM robbery, although maybe that was someone else.

 

[BleedGopher]

Alexander was caught stealing both credit cards and a stereo. He transferred to SMU and found trouble there as well.

A lot of lives were forever changed as a result of that season.

I actually ran into Mitch Lee in Tulsa, OK about 15 years ago. He was playing for the Tulsa Zone of the CBA and his team practiced at the same club I played tennis at. The day and very moment I met him was when Magic was giving his famous press conference announcing he had AIDS. It was just Mitch Lee and I and it was very surreal as I was obviously a HUGE Gopher fan. We watched Magic's press conference and made small talk about the magnitude of it. I made a reference that I was a huge Gopher fan and all he said was "that was a tough period in my life." I didn't push the topic any further as it wasn't appropriate at all, but it was a weird conversation that I'll never forget.

Go Gophers!!

 

[Dr.Don]

Bleed...all I can say is WOW!!!!! Do you suppose he learned something, and all of the lives he negatively affected at that time?

 

[Maximus]

I remember being a small kid at the Gophers preseason scrimmage...Mitch Lee was a freshman. I remember him nearly taking a couple of swings at his own teammates during the scrimmage.

I believe one of the football players that joined was Roselle Richardson.

Gophersports has the highlight tape from that season....not surprisingly the video starts with the win over Ohio State. The next game they nearly knocked off Indiana (which was briefly mentioned in the book Season on the Brink which chronicled the Hoosiers that season...a must read).

 

[Donovan]

I was a Sophomore at the U and worked in the ice cream stand for four years at Williams Arena. I was a HUGE fan and that was a crushing blow. I remember vividly that iron 5 game and the Mitch Lee champagne glass shaved in his head.

One thing that was a real epiphany to me was the reaction by the women's studies department at the U. A couple years before this scandal, today's Goldy Gopher came about. However, many of you may not know that Goldy back then had claws, his eyebrows were tilted to look more intimidating, and lastly he was a bit more buff (some jokingly call him the steroid gopher now). I loved that Goldy. But, in the wisdom of this women's studies department later convinced the leadership of the university that the mascot was too aggressive looking and may have helped promote aggression towards women. The school caved and de-clawed Goldy to his now huggable self. I was so angry about this (in fact I still get pissed off thinking about it).

I'm glad I still have a few items with the old angry Goldy in my collection. In fact, it's hard to find any pictures of that old Goldy. I did some Googling and found this site, and it skips right by that Goldy as though he never existed:

http://www1.umn.edu/enterprise/ch119804.html

This was 20 years ago, so, my memory of what happened to that Goldy may be a incorrect. If I'm off base, please correct me.

thanks,

 

[Zales04]

Anybody have a link that actually has it?

I think this is the one you are thinking of, we used it on the Spat Camp shirts back in 2000 (with a minor addition of the best brass instrument):

I might have a larger version on my computer, I could dig it up for you tomorrow, and maybe even remove the trombone.

 

[ofergopher]

[A]s John Shasky noted in his interview, there were alarm bells going off beforehand because of Dutch's lack of discipline enforcement. (Dutch looked for the good in people, and felt that if you treated players like adults, they'd behave that way. He was disappointed and hurt when the players didn't meet that standard...)

I have nothing approximating first-hand insider knowledge of the situation, but my perception from the outside accords with that description of Dutcher. He took the Gophers job when Bill Musselman left town one step ahead of the law (NCAA) to go to the ABA in San Diego, taking Mark Olberding with him. But he left behind a couple of Bahamian/Floridians - Mychal Thompson and Osborne Lockhart - who were basically good guys as well as great ballplayers. Dutch was able to continue to utilize that Florida pipeline, always able to select good citizens and good athletes like Zeb Howell, Cookie Holmes, and Darryl Mitchell. But then came the discovery by SEC schools that basketball was more than a distraction during football's off-season and there was money to be made on indoor sports. With much more competition for southern basketball talent, Dutch was forced, or chose, to accept athletes with more question marks about their character. Minnesota Nice, meet Mitch Lee.

 

[leftyslefty]

Mitch Lee.........

was a Jimmy Williams recruit, and probably the main reason why he was nixed by the prez when Tubby was putting his staff together.

Todd Alexander was a very talented "lefty," who was no boy scout, and the discovery of one Philip "Flip" Saunders, the other full time Gopher assistant.

 

[Jim V2]

I believe one of the football players that joined was Roselle Richardson.

I believe you have an excellent memory.

 

[Donovan]

I think this is the one you are thinking of, we used it on the Spat Camp shirts back in 2000 (with a minor addition of the best brass instrument):

I might have a larger version on my computer, I could dig it up for you tomorrow, and maybe even remove the trombone.

No, that one is WAY bigger than the actual mascot. I just took a picture of one, and created it as my avatar. Sadly it is so small it probably looks like the current Goldy. Click on my avatar and it gets a bit bigger.

 

[dinkything]

Can anyone fill me in as to what the '86 "Madison scandal" was? From what I gathered from the John Shasky article, it sounds like a big deal (players kicked off team, Coach quit), but I don't think I ever heard of it until just now. I couldn't find anything on the internet other than Dutcher quit mid season out of protest. I've heard of the violations under Musselman and was in school for Clems so I thought it was weird that this never came up before.

i can recall a few events connected to this era in gopher hoops...

one was a fight during a practice involving mitch lee, which occurred in the barn...iirc, mitch lee chased george williams through the barn...williams ran from lee and hid in the locker room, locking the door behind him...lee, knowing williams was hiding in the locked locker room, apparently put his fist through the locker room door, sending wood splinters everywhere...some glass was broken, too...the chase ensued, and lee finally caught williams near a row of seats inside the barn...lee then grabbed ahold of williams, physically over-powered him, and laid williams' upper torso across the back of one of the barn's seats...he then positioned williams' cranium off the edge of the back of the seat in a way where it appeared he was trying to snap williams' neck!!

finally, some onlookers stepped in and stopped the fight before anything permanent could happen, and before anymore damage could be done...

as far as the night in madison is concerned, the alleged female 'victim' was described as a 'pin cushion'...she was found in the hotel room early the next morning...shaking, wimpering, and wrapped in a bed sheet...one of the three player's wallets was on the night stand next to her...

that same friday morning, the gopher players and coaches had boarded a plane for an early flight from madison to chicago, for the following day's game against northwestern...

but before the plane could take off, several of madison's police officers boarded the plane, told the pilots to 'cool the engines'...marched everyone off the plane, and the rest, as they say, is history...
truly one of the darkest days in the history of gopher hoops...

 

[tikited]

FB players - Roselle Richardson and Tim Juneau

I played against Tim Juneau in high school. The kid was a monster if I remember correctly. Tim and Roselle really helped the b-ball team out during that time. The OSU game was a game for the ages for some of those involved. About the only good thing to come out of the whole mess.

 

[inflectionpoint]

I was a Sophomore at the U and worked in the ice cream stand for four years at Williams Arena. I was a HUGE fan and that was a crushing blow. I remember vividly that iron 5 game and the Mitch Lee champagne glass shaved in his head.

One thing that was a real epiphany to me was the reaction by the women's studies department at the U. A couple years before this scandal, today's Goldy Gopher came about. However, many of you may not know that Goldy back then had claws, his eyebrows were tilted to look more intimidating, and lastly he was a bit more buff (some jokingly call him the steroid gopher now). I loved that Goldy. But, in the wisdom of this women's studies department later convinced the leadership of the university that the mascot was too aggressive looking and may have helped promote aggression towards women. The school caved and de-clawed Goldy to his now huggable self. I was so angry about this (in fact I still get pissed off thinking about it).

I'm glad I still have a few items with the old angry Goldy in my collection. In fact, it's hard to find any pictures of that old Goldy. I did some Googling and found this site, and it skips right by that Goldy as though he never existed:

http://www1.umn.edu/enterprise/ch119804.html

This was 20 years ago, so, my memory of what happened to that Goldy may be a incorrect. If I'm off base, please correct me.

thanks,

I know this is off topic from the thread a bit, but since you were inquiring about Fierce/Angry Goldy - I was able to dig him up. Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard that background on the change to our present Goldy... very interesting.

Also thanks to everyone for the history about this incident. Not a time in Gopher hoops to necessarily be proud of, but its good to know and appreciate the stories.

 

[dinkything]

I know this is off topic from the thread a bit, but since you were inquiring about Fierce/Angry Goldy - I was able to dig him up. Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard that background on the change to our present Goldy... very interesting.

if i'm not mistaken, lou holtz came into the 'u' with the idea that goldy, the mascot, should spend some time in the weight room...shortly thereafter, goldy's chest and shoulders reflected holtz's idea as to what goldy should look like...

 

[Donovan]

I know this is off topic from the thread a bit, but since you were inquiring about Fierce/Angry Goldy - I was able to dig him up. Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard that background on the change to our present Goldy... very interesting.

Also thanks to everyone for the history about this incident. Not a time in Gopher hoops to necessarily be proud of, but its good to know and appreciate the stories.

That is awesome, thanks for posting the comparison!

 

[cncmin]

I'm glad I still have a few items with the old angry Goldy in my collection. In fact, it's hard to find any pictures of that old Goldy. I did some Googling and found this site, and it skips right by that Goldy as though he never existed:

http://www1.umn.edu/enterprise/ch119804.html

This was 20 years ago, so, my memory of what happened to that Goldy may be a incorrect. If I'm off base, please correct me.

thanks,

I was a student at the U in the beginning-middle 90s. Note that in about 93 or 94, the huggable Goldy that you loved was transformed back into an angry Gopher. I clearly remember thinking that this "new" Goldy was going to scare all the kids that used to love being around "happy" Goldy. Angry Goldy didn't last very long, if I recall only one season, before going back to happy huggable Goldy. I do seem to recall, also, that upon the initial reintroduction of happy Goldy, the new one looked like it had been through a scuffle: its fur was all beat up and he just looked like he had been used and abused, even though it seemed like a new outfit.

Was I just imagining these things or can anyone back me up on these observations?