Canzano: A last dance worth watching
One of the saddest (and most rewarding) basketball seasons ever.
One of the saddest college basketball stories in the country has to be the one unfolding on campus at Multnomah University.
A couple of weeks ago, on the first day of class after Christmas break, coaches of the school’s NAIA sports programs were called into a room and handed yellow envelopes. They contained letters with employment termination dates.
“My ‘end date’ is the end of the season,” Tayo Gem, the men’s basketball coach, told me on Wednesday.
The university athletics programs will cease operations at the end of the academic school year. The 88-year-old school has been mired in years of financial decline and low enrollment. The campus near the corner of NE 82nd Avenue and NE Glisan Street once boasted more than 1,000 students.
Bettie Page, a pin-up girl in the 1950s, is a graduate.
So is evangelist, Luis Palau.
Multnomah University had dwindled to 335 undergraduate students when it put itself up for sale last year. The school was sold in the spring and rebranded as a satellite campus for Jessup University. Students were offered participation in a “teach-out” program so they could finish their degrees. But it wasn’t until Jan. 14 that athletes were informed the sports teams would disband.
“Our last dance,” Gem said
For all the marbles.
I’d like to say that I was tuned into this story over several months. But I wasn’t. I’ve never seen Multnomah University play a basketball game. I found out about the saga from an old sportswriter named Harry Cummins a couple of weeks ago. He followed the program relentlessly and reached out with a message: “Sad day for local sports.”
Harry is 80. He wrote sports stories for the UPI in Southern California decades ago and has worked as a freelance magazine writer, among other jobs. Harry had breakfast once with NBA basketball player Bill Bradley. He loved that experience. He also shadow-boxed in a hotel room with boxing champion Archie Moore.
“Those kinds of experiences,” Harry told me, “I’ll take to grave.”
This basketball season will go with him, too.
Harry is retired and lives in Portland. He adopted the Lions of Multnomah University as his favorite team a few seasons ago and jokes that he’s the “unofficial beat writer” of the program. Harry sits in on team meetings, attends games, watches film sessions, and writes stories about the team.
The Lions are 13-8 this season. It happens to be the most successful men’s basketball season in school history. And so Harry feels like this final season amounts to watching the last sunset.
“It’s the last round-up, the last goodbye, whatever you want to call it,” Harry told me. “I feel for the kids. It’s a great story. They’re in contention for the playoffs. They’re playing well, despite not knowing what their future is.”
Gem, the team’s 39-year-old head coach, is local. He attended David Douglas High and is in his second season on the job. He inherited the program from Curt Bickley, who poured himself into the program for two decades.
Multnomah University was known over the years for its three-point shooting. The school still holds the NAIA record for most made three-point baskets in a game (38). A former star player, Justin Martin, once scored 74 points in a single game. But this final season of Lions basketball has been about wringing the joy out of every possession.
The Lions play good defense.
And they’re selfless.
“We’ve got six games left,” Gem told me. “I’ve allowed the guys to be vulnerable. Some want to talk about their plans for next year. Some others just want to focus on this year. There are a lot of mixed feelings. It’s been a lot to absorb over the last couple of weeks.”
Universities in lots of places are facing enrollment declines. The business of higher education hits like a bag of bricks. Multnomah University won’t be the last school to close its doors or defund athletics.
Lots of Division I schools are making difficult decisions about how to tier (read: determine financial support) the programs they offer on campus.
Jessup University was more interested in owning the Multnomah University seminary than the rest of the school, insiders tell me. The school’s undergraduate studies were disbanded. Nobody was shocked that there was no room for athletics in the budget.
“We heard lots of rumblings,” Gem said.
I’m planning to catch a basketball game before the end of the regular season. I want to see the men’s basketball team from Multnomah University play before they’re done. I know the head coach and that roster of his would love to see you show up, too.
College athletics has lost its way. Football fashions itself as the NFL-light. Spring football is now facing a threat. The “Power Four” conferences want to seize control of March Madness. Players change schools like they change socks. Media-rights deals — and not history, tradition, and common sense — drove realignment decisions. And in the end, envelopes are handed out to NAIA coaches, informing them of “end dates.”
The Lions missed the playoffs by one game last season. They likely need only one victory in the final six games to qualify. Getting to the postseason is a goal the team set at the start of the season, and Gem said: “We aim to get that goal on our way out.”
Saddest basketball season ever?
Most rewarding?
Some of both?
There’s some magic buried in what Multnomah University is doing this season. Harry, the old beat writer, promises the basketball is entertaining and the kids on the roster have “good values.” It’s one of the best stories nobody knows about, he said.
Thanks to him — we do now.
“It will be sad for me to see it go,” Harry said, “but I guess all things move on.”
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Well that is really sad. Unfortunately, education is on the decline (see Trump winning 2024). People do not believe in eduction anymore (see misinformation spread the last nine years, mostly by MAGA). Conspiracy theories are now facts (see Elon, Donald, and Robert). I see more universities closing in the next decade. RIP, USA.
I played for Multnomah 1992-94, coached by Jm Skagen, who the court is named after. I am sad that the court will be gone. Interesting fact: I played before the NAIA days, at teh time we were affiliated with the NBCAA, and we went to the National Tournament in 1992 in Oklahoma City. We lost in the Championship game to San Jose Christian College, who would go on to become William Jessup University.