A Union All But Sundered?

Small N.Y. college wrestles with a not so puckish problem

Quiet, scholarly Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., does not give athletic scholarships. And its hockey team had disappeared early in World War II, along with Lucky Strike Green and natural rubber tires. But in 1974 a 90-year-old professor emeritus of religion named H. Lawrence Achilles gave Union $1.5 million to build a rink. Swiftly the college acquired a famous hockey coach, a winning team and a sure source of income from gate receipts and public rental. But as of last week, Union also had a rebellious faculty and a troubled president charged with selling out to the jocks. Its coach has quit despite running up a 46-7-2 record over 2% seasons, and so has his entire team.

The coach, and cause celebre of the Union uproar, is Ned Harkness, a tense, passionate competitor who eats poached eggs to soothe a nervous stomach and refers to hockey pucks as "black vitamins." A leg wound as an RCAF bombardier in World War II cut him off from playing, but at 56, he is legendary in hockey for building championship teams practically from scratch. He was doing just that for Union when he quit, and he did it twice before-first at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then for Cornell. After his Cornell team won all 29 of its games, including the national college championships in 1970, Harkness moved on to coach the Detroit Red Wings. The pros, however, took a jaundiced view of his gung-ho pep talks. Said one player: "The man's mad." Said New England Whalers Center Gordie Howe: "If Ned has a fault, it's that he thinks hockey too much."

The man's genius, and his downfall, was recruiting. Harkness could scour the plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan signing up farm boys better than anyone. When asked why he switched from R.P.I. to Cornell, he used to say: "Because it's 90 miles closer to the Canadian border."

In 1974, after Union President Thomas Bonner got hold of Harkness to beef up the school's anemic athletic program, Harkness had little trouble lining up talent, not only from Canada but from Massachusetts and Michigan. But to do it, he broke strict New England Small College Athletic Conference rules forbidding a coach to visit a prospect at his home. Cited by the conference last spring, he at first denied the misdeed to Bonner. "I lied," Harkness admits, adding, as if to explain everything, "but I lied to save my hockey program." He was suspended by Bonner but reinstated by the college trustees.

The outraged faculty voted no confidence in Bonner. He offered his resignation. The trustees refused it. Not to be outdone, the faculty-run admissions committee last spring turned down four of Harkness's new hockey recruits as academically inadequate. (They went to Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Cornell.)

The feud simmered down over the summer, but when four of his players were suspended for academic reasons this December, Harkness resigned. He cited harassment and unkept promises of support. Last week the entire team turned in its sticks, vowing never to play for Union without Harkness as coach. The college is trying to work out a compromise and patch up some sort of a season. But Ned Harkness is probably gone for good. Where he will go is unknown. But back in Detroit, when he was under fire from fans and press, he often glumly quoted Knute Rockne. The only place where a coach could really stay clear of meddling and keep his players in line, said Rockne, would be Alcatraz.

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