Nearly a year later, they thanked him.

With classes about to start at Binghamton University, some 200 well-wishers came out to Traditions at the Glen in mid-August to honor Joel Thirer.

There were community leaders and friends, administrators and sponsors. State Sen. Tom Libous, a Binghamton athletics supporter, couldn’t make it to the Johnson City golf course, but sent along a proclamation. ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser couldn’t attend either, and sent a video tribute instead.

One quip was a crowd-pleaser.

‘Joel Thirer’s accomplishments at Binghamton,’ Kornheiser said, ‘will outlive the remnants of what came from an assassin at The New York Times.’

It’s been little more than a year since Thirer’s 20-year tenure as Binghamton’s athletics director disintegrated, taking men’s basketball coach Kevin Broadus and the caliber of the program along with it. Players were linked to selling drugs and credit card theft. A $1 million state investigation found that professors had been pressured to show the team favoritism. The list of improprieties was long, and Pete Thamel, the Times reporter who shepherded the scandal, was that assassin.

Thirer, too, spoke that night, and offered his thanks. Now 62 and dogged by a national sports scandal, his health was failing. Between February and June, he needed three heart surgeries, and now goes to cardiac rehab three times a week.

Thirer had appeared before colleagues only once since he’d resigned ‘ actually, been fired ‘ on Sept. 30, 2009. The previous appearance was a standard, end-of-school-year department meeting that doubled as a reception in late May, when many staff had left campus for the summer. The turnout that time was 60, maybe 70.

Most had barely seen him since fall.

‘It was pretty harsh. He was whisked away in the middle of the night,’ a Binghamton athletics department staffer said. ‘And no one even knew what the hell had happened, and he wasn’t seen in here until May. So from October to May, he obviously didn’t feel comfortable enough to even walk in this building. And that’s sad after being here and everything that he did.’

Like many of the dozen people interviewed for this story, the staff member spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on Thirer and didn’t want to jeopardize their relationship. Thirer agreed to an interview last week then declined a day later, citing his health.

Thirer, a tenured professor at Binghamton, returned to teaching at the end of August. The campus he returned to has no walkway named after him, no faculty prize in his name, no university-compiled online video of goodbyes and thank yous. Lois B. DeFleur, the school’s president of 19 years, was afforded all those honors, and one that was perhaps even greater: the chance to leave, ostensibly, on her own terms.

DeFleur in January said she would retire, an announcement that came less than a month before a retired chief judge issued the scathing state report on what happened on her watch and Thirer’s.

In the past year, DeFleur’s legacy has been burnished as thoroughly as Thirer’s has been airbrushed out.

He might have had it coming, but he might have deserved better.

REMARKABLE CHANGE

The fear in the early 1990s was that the entirety of Binghamton University would fade in stature if the jump to Division I wasn’t made. While Stony Brook, Albany and Buffalo ‘ all Division I schools ‘ grew as premier SUNY campuses, Binghamton would be left on par with Cortland and Oswego.

Then Thirer arrived from Southern Illinois University to take over as athletics director in 1989, and by 1994, his plans to make the leap to Division I were made public. He brought in full-time coaches, he renovated facilities. Most important, he found funding.

The transformation was completed in 2001 after a two-year stint in Division II. In the face of detractors, Thirer had completed a massive undertaking, and the greatest of his career.

The crown jewel was the $33.1 million Events Center, which opened in 2004.

‘We’re not talking about just change, we’re talking about drastic change,’ said BU baseball’s Tim Sinicki, the school’s longest-tenured head coach, entering his 19th season. ‘I grew up in the Binghamton area ‘ I spent many days with my family driving up and down Vestal Parkway. And not even once did I know of or acknowledge the fact that SUNY-Binghamton had an intercollegiate athletics program.’

Detractors, though, were numerous. Some faculty had a blanket dislike for change, others a legitimate fear of what the move would bring. That Thirer fought through it all was no small feat.

‘There’s people who typically would be here a long time, who grew up with the University basically being a liberal arts school; they didn’t want to see it change from that,’ said Peter Knuepfer, a professor who’s long been involved in SUNY and BU politics. ‘On balance, I think the institution is better for the moves it’s made ‘ I can remember walking into the Events Center for the very first game that was held there. You could just feel a buzz.’

‘HE WAS A VERY EMOTIONAL PERSON,

VERY PASSIONATE’

Those who worked with Thirer say he’s a family man. ‘He’s a very warm person,’ said associate athletics director for communications John Hartrick. ‘He just loves his wife and his daughters so dearly, and he always cared about people. He was so wonderful with me when I was the young father.’

But he had other sides professionally. BU wouldn’t have made it to Division I through the uproar if it weren’t for his passion.

‘I really knew him the last six years and one thing was always consistent: he was a very emotional person, very passionate,’ said America East commissioner Patrick Nero, who met Thirer in 2003 when Nero was the University of Maine’s athletics director. ‘He was so passionate he was doing things the right way

Signs of trouble were there as early as the 1990s divisional transition. One faculty member who dealt with Thirer called him ‘arrogant.’ A former member of the athletics department said he was ‘an absolute tyrant.’

Thirer’s relationship with Matt Bassett, a senior associate director and the overseer of the basketball program until he left in 2007, was known to be particularly messy.

‘Matt basically knew basketball and Matt selected Al Walker [Broadus’ predecessor], and Joel I think always felt a little slighted,’ an athletics department source said. ‘Matt had a certain likeability and charm about him that Joel found bothersome.’

After Bassett left, his close colleague Rich Conover, the BU women’s basketball coach, was let go a year later. Multiple sources said Thirer fired Conover to get even.

Bassett, who left to become the athletics director at LeMoyne, did not return requests for comment. Thirer himself took over Bassett’s oversight role of the BU basketball program, and he hand-picked Broadus, an assistant at Georgetown, in March of 2007.

An athletics director choosing a high-profile coach isn’t unusual in itself, but a colleague said the sense of empowerment Thirer felt was unusual.

‘He got to talk with John Thompson, and he talked with [Jim] Boeheim,’ the source said, ‘ with Bob Knight and a lot of big-name people. And I think he really got a charge about it.’

**********A BROAD LACK OF CONTROL *********

The final seconds of Binghamton’s 61-51 win over UMBC on March 14, 2009 were marked by hysteria. The Bearcats had clinched their first America East tournament title, and their first trip to March Madness along with it.

Still on YouTube are videos of a Manhattan bar, filled with screaming Bearcats fans: ‘We want Duke!’ Binghamton was Cinderella. If two years with Broadus brought this, what would three bring?

The Times reporter, Thamel, had already questioned Binghamton’s recruiting and academic standards in a February story. The night before Binghamton lost to Duke 86-62 in the opening round of the tournament, he broke another story: the filing of a sexual harassment suit against Binghamton athletics staffers.

By the fall, Murphy’s Law had come into full force, and Thamel, who declined to comment for this story, was on top of everything.

‘People here, people inside the world of basketball, everybody knew this thing was going to implode,’ said one Division I athletics administrator with ties to Binghamton. ‘That it couldn’t not implode.’

According to Judith Kaye’s report into the men’s basketball program, conducted on behest of the SUNY chancellor, Thirer and DeFleur were both warned of the crash course they were on in the summer of 2009. ‘Dr. Thirer was unwilling to listen,’ and DeFleur was ‘defensive and unreceptive,’ Kaye wrote.

Those meetings and most other details, though, weren’t known until February of 2010, when Kaye’s report was released ‘ including the events preceding the release of six Bearcats in September of 2009. The allegations mounted once the report was out: Admissions standards were ignored. Teachers were pressured to change grades.

But all that was publicly known on Sept. 25, 2009 was that six players had been thrown off the team in a span of a couple days, one for dealing cocaine in upstate New York, the rest for offenses yet to be publicized.

Five days later, on September 30, the axe fell on Thirer.

DeFleur ‘maintained that Dr. Thirer offered her his resignation, although she observed that she could understand how Dr. Thirer could have perceived that he was fired,’ Kaye wrote.

***************THE THIRER THEORY*********

Why didn’t Thirer put his foot down? Was he just not equipped for Division I? Was he lost without Bassett? Could winning have mattered enough to cut all those corners?

The answer might be simpler.

About 150 miles from Binghamton, former Rutgers University athletics director Robert Mulcahy spent most of the last decade trying to transform Rutgers football into a powerhouse. Reportedly, an attempt to funnel money to football helped bring on his firing in 2008.

But there was no recruiting scandal. Greg Schiano, Mulcahy’s hire, is in his 10th year.

‘My legacy and my tenure here is going to be known for the football coach that I picked,’ Mulcahy said. ‘If he fails, then I fail.’

Kevin Broadus was Joel Thirer’s guy. If Broadus told Joel Thirer he needed something ‘ a questionable recruit here, another one there ‘ Thirer wanted to give it to him.

‘He needed Kevin to work,’ an athletics department source said. ‘That was his ego and his butt on the line. Kevin was given just a huge chunk of leeway because Joel needed him to succeed.’

By extension, Joel Thirer was Lois DeFleur’s guy.

How about a plaque in the Hall of Fame? Sinicki and Hartrick said they want it to happen. Politics, like the hiring of a new athletics director and president, might delay that.

Men’s soccer head coach Paul Marco said he doesn’t hide the scandal from recruits, and that he hasn’t yet lost one because of it. Marco to this day says he never would have left a head coaching job in the Big East to come to Binghamton in 2002 if it weren’t for Thirer, and his values.

Sinicki, whose program improved its win total in an NCAA-record seven straight seasons ‘ six under Thirer ‘ isn’t sure his old boss even made a mistake.

‘I read the [Kaye report],’ Sinicki said. ‘But at the same time, I’m privy to head coaches meetings and meetings that are held by our administration who are insistent as well that there are things in there that may or may not be true. And there are a lot of things left out of there as well and things twisted to come across a certain way.’

Sinicki and Marco point out in Thirer’s defense that there are 21 varsity teams at BU. Binghamton’s student-athletes posted a 3.11 GPA in 2009-10, third best in the conference. Men’s tennis’ 3.69 mark was the highest of any team, regardless of sport. It won a conference championship to boot.

Thirer built not only the Events Center, but a soccer and lacrosse complex that opened next to it in 2007, the Bearcats Sports Complex. The same season as that stadium went operational, Marco’s team posted the highest GPA of more than 200 Division I soccer programs in the nation.

‘It’s staggering,’ Marco said.

Hartrick couldn’t make it to the farewell in August, but he was at the staff meeting in May. He read a short tribute.

‘When Joel arrived here in 1989, athletics was an afterthought on campus,’ Hartrick wrote in his notes. ‘None of this existed before Joel arrived. It was HIS vision, HIS fortitude, HIS passion and HIS leadership ‘

That remains subject to debate. The findings of an NCAA investigation into the program have yet to be released. Either way, Kaye’s discoveries won’t be reversed ‘ and neither will Binghamton’s switch to Division I, despite a letter from faculty to DeFleur asking otherwise in the spring.

‘More good than bad is a scale that is hard to measure,’ Nero said. ‘Sometimes one year of bad can outweigh 19 years of good, and I think that’s what happened here. It’s unfortunate, but he’s going to be remembered more for the bad than the good.’