Dec. 27, 2007

My Person of the Year is not John Danowski.

Danowski, tabbed by the editorial staff of Lacrosse magazine as our Person of the Year, is a good man and a safe choice for the honor. By stepping in and cleaning up the Duke lacrosse miasma with patience, leadership, and media savvy, Danowski certainly had a good year.

As my Person of the Year has demonstrated, safe choices aren't necessarily the right ones.

Before revealing my POY, I want to make it crystal clear this is not an anti-Danowski piece. Danowski's achievements and the near storybook ending he scripted for the Blue Devils is undoubtedly the story of 2007. However, when I look for an individual worthy of Person of the Year, the first trait I look for is courage.

There certainly must have been some hand-wringing by Danowski about taking the Duke job, as well as leaving his long-time position at Hofstra, but I wouldn't qualify taking one of the premier coaching jobs in the country and accepting the opportunity to coach his son as necessarily courageous. Many people out there will disagree with my assessment, citing a myriad of selfless acts by Danowski. That's fine. Danowski deserves any and all of the praise he receives, even if it's not in this space.

It's just there is an individual who displayed a level of guts beyond what I have seen in the world of lacrosse, and outside of it, in quite a while.

It should be known my POY is not a lacrosse coach or player, although he did play in college about 20 years ago. And, to be accurate, the pivotal decision made by my Person of the Year was done in the latter stages of 2006, although the impact of that choice resonated strongly in '07.

So without further ado, I give you my POY: Bill Smith.

The non-descript feel of a name like Bill Smith is apropos considering how little fanfare or credit Smith received for making the most brilliant and daring choice the sport has seen in a long time. Smith, the athletic director at Bryant College, was the person who lured Mike Pressler from the depths of a publicity purgatory to the small, Rhode Island campus as its men's lacrosse coach.

The brilliance of the hire is self-evident.

In a matter of months the seven-year-old Bryant program transformed from a mildly competitive, second-tier Division II program into a regional - and nearly a national - power under Pressler's tutelage. The Bulldogs ended Le Moyne's monumental 70-game conference winning streak and 63-game regular season skein early in the season, rose to as high as No. 4 in the country, and won the Northeast-10 regular season title. At the end of the season, they were this close to the school's first NCAA berth.

It's the daring that makes Smith my Person of the Year.

Let's think back to August of '06 when Smith pulled the trigger on hiring Pressler. The unequivocal rejection of the entire Duke case we have now come to accept was nowhere evident. In his pathetic quest for reelection and fame, Mike Nifong was still steadfast in his witch hunt against David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty.

Pressler, who had been fired from Duke in the spring, was still radioactive as a viable coaching candidate.

Oh, Pressler applied for jobs in all three divisions during the summer of 2006 - you can check back to see the jobs available at that time and figure it out - but no one was willing to look at the emerging facts and give him a chance. Athletic directors weighed the PR factor more heavily in their decision-making process than what was best for their student-athletes. As a result, they opted to take the easiest path.

Bill Smith faced the same dilemma.

Instead of worrying about the purveying attitude about the Duke sham, he did his homework and checked the records. When he found out through his old high school classmate, Army coach Joe Alberici, that Pressler might be interested in the Bryant opening, Smith and school president Ronald Machtley started digging to see if they could find a reason other than the verbal diarrhea streaming from the mouths of headline chasers like Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson to not hire Pressler.

Smith found that Duke's internal review of the situation (the so-called Coleman Report) cleared Pressler of any wrong-doing. He spoke with legendary hoops coach Mike Kryzewski and Pressler's former players and colleagues. Smith even talked with Duke president Richard Brodhead - the man responsible for wrongly firing Pressler.

All the responses came back the same.

Basically, Bryant would be foolish not to hire a guy who had been sacrificed on the altar of knee-jerk, face-saving, short-sighted political correctness.

Pressler's 100 percent graduation rate and 229-102 overall record strengthened Smith's resolve.

Adding to the impressiveness of Smith's actions is the fact he should have been more leery of hiring Pressler than any other AD out there.

Smith accepted the Bryant AD job in early April of 2006 - a scant five months before hiring Pressler - and was still in the process of getting his feet wet on Smithfield, R.I., campus. As a neophyte trying to make a good impression, passing on Pressler would have been the prudent thing to do for most administrators.

Why rock the boat just five months into your job, right?

The courage shown by Smith is further magnified when placed next to the entire Duke case. Despite the many athletic directors who had a chance to hire Pressler, it was only the Bryant AD who did the homework about the true nature of the former Duke coach.

With many individuals and groups convicting the Duke players and program before the facts became clear, lowlighted by the intellectual bankruptcy shown by the 88 cowardly Duke professors who prematurely passed judgment on the lacrosse team via a newspaper advertisement, Smith had the backbone and self-confidence to disregard lemmings and make the right choice.

And, of course, when compared with Nifong, Smith's adherence to common human decency was truly telling.

Above anything else, Bill Smith is my Person of the Year because he did what none of us would have had the guts to do. Sure, the long lens of hindsight now makes the decision a no-brainer, however it was anything but on Aug. 5, 2006.

Fortunately, Smith doesn't need any pat on the back from me. His genius was on display all last year and will be again this spring. He may not have received his due for his courage, but Smith certainly lives well knowing he was the smartest man in the lacrosse community last year.

The year 2007 proved to be a resurgent one for lacrosse. Myths were debunked, the good guys were vindicated, and the bad guys, for the most part, were vanquished. Hopefully, 2008 will be about men and women, boys and girls, who are willing to follow the lead of individuals like Bill Smith. Individuals who are willing to take the road less traveled when they know the way is right.

Contact Jac Coyne at jcoyne@uslacrosse.org.