There’s no questioning the fact that Mazzoleni and Murphy have totally rejuvenated the two banner sports at Harvard in the last decade.

But it only makes you wonder what could have happened if both of them had been inserted a little earlier while the hockey and football teams struggled through brutal five-year stretches.

Now I’m not saying in any way, shape, or form that all decisions on whether or not to retain coaches should be based on wins and losses. In reading the archived Crimson articles announcing the resignations of both coaches, it is clear that both Restic and Tomassoni were great people who added a lot to the University at large and helped their student-athletes grow as young men.

Yet at some point, the Harvard administration has to look at the fact that excitement about athletics is not going to come from students and others unless they hold coaches accountable for bad records.

Not one bad year, not two or three, but when a coach goes four consecutive years without a winning record– much less an Ivy League Championship–in my mind, something needs to be done. There’s no doubt in my mind that the University wouldn’t tolerate two sub-par years for a department by a departmental head, much less four. Harvard prides itself on being one of the very top academic schools in the nation, and the administration clearly believes it has to have the very best people leading the academic departments.

But it seems to me that the administration will repeatedly look the other way at terrible won-loss records if the coach in question keeps his team out of trouble and in good academic standing, also managing to achieve with some degree of early success. Of course, these things are very important: I just believe that it’s not out of the question to find coaches that can maintain these things and also win games.

Hell, Murphy and Mazzoleni prove it.

Today, simply consider the complacency in basketball.

Coach Frank Sullivan came to Harvard 13 years ago after a fantastic stint as the coach of Division II Bentley College; in seven years there, he was named conference Coach of the Year three times and he finished with an overall record of 141-199. He clearly knows how to coach.

Yet at Harvard, Sullivan has had less success, to be sure. He had success in his fourth and fifth seasons in 1995-96 and 1996-97 when he led his team to records of 15-11 and 17-9.

But his overall record of 141-200 simply does not hold up to the excellent Harvard standard set not only in academics, but by coaches in other major sports, such as Murphy, Mazzoleni, and baseball coach Joe Walsh.

Now, to be fair, Sullivan has raised the bar quite a bit for Harvard basketball. It has historically been one of Harvard’s worst athletic programs, and it has never once won an Ivy League Championship–the only of the Ancient Eight to be able to say this.

So to some degree Sullivan is a victim of his own success. And I don’t think Sullivan should be fired tomorrow; last year he clearly was rebuilding after a great senior class graduated in 2003 and the 4-23 record can be excused.

But I think that within the next two years, if Sullivan can’t win when more mature versions of the players he recruited–and at least compete for the Ivy League

title–then in my mind he needs to go.