It’s a little late for the CMU administration to be condemning the Mid-American Conference for the scheduling of the Central/Western football game on a Tuesday night.

But an e-mail from University President Michael Rao and interim Provost Gary Shapiro to students, faculty and staff Tuesday did just that – a week after the game was played and eight months after the date was announced.

It’s not as though CMU or Athletics had nothing to do with the scheduling. The prospect of a night game broadcast nationwide on ESPN 2 was an enticing chance for exposure.

If CMU really had wanted to speak out against weekday football games from being played on a Tuesday, that time was long before the game took place.

Gary Richter, MAC assistant commissioner for media relations, said he was unaware of any complaints about the scheduling before now.

But it’s been eight months since the scheduling was announced. Surely both teams were aware of the possibility of a Tuesday game before a schedule was finalized.

This is an example of CMU covering for itself after something, predictably, turned out to be a bad idea.

The problem is that students wanted to see the game in person. The Central/Western rivalry is a long-standing tradition. The universities and the MAC should have expected students would want to participate on a Tuesday night.

CMU should have expected students would do whatever they could to try to get to the game – including skipping classes, organizing trips to Western and creating a petition to get classes canceled.

They should have expected the turnout to such a game would be abysmal – the lack of attendance was clearly broadcast on national television. They also should have expected alumni would be angered by having the rivalry game on a day when they can’t attend.

CMU should not sell out its alumni and students in favor of a television broadcast, regardless of the national exposure claimed.

An e-mail sent out a week after the fact isn’t fooling anybody; it’s a thinly veiled attempt at passing the buck.

The MAC isn’t some clandestine agency somewhere out in the universe. It’s a group of schools making decisions about athletics, and CMU and WMU are a part of that group. Pretending as though CMU had absolutely no role in scheduling and that students and alumni are unfortunate victims of an evil MAC is ridiculous.

CMU should own up to its responsibilities. The Tuesday game was a bad idea and the CMU community has been saying so for eight months.

It’s about time upper administration got frustrated like the rest of us, but it’s a little too late this year.

Hopefully, this e-mail was really about next year and we won’t see a weekday football game in 2008. But the e-mail should have said that.

The people in this community aren’t stupid. People will have more respect for the administration and Athletics when they take responsibility for a mistake and correct it – that takes more than one short e-mail.

E-mail the author: defaultuser