What is particularly baffling about the drive to recruit star basketball players at Harvard is how remarkably little Harvard students care about their sports teams. I would hazard a guess that a majority of Harvard students have never even gone to a college sporting event (excepting the Harvard-Yale game, the main draw of which is not football but lavish alumni and student tailgates).

That said, I do not find it as objectionable as the UNC-Charlotte example, for the simple reason that the students will pay for UNC-Charlotte’s football while alumni and the basketball endowment will, I gather, foot the bill in Harvard’s case.

As to the Times’ claim that Harvard’s reputation will be sullied: If it has not already been sullied by grade inflation, a joke of a general-education regime, and a flowering of postmodernism that has enveloped all the traditional departments with the possible exception of Economics, a few “ballers” really will not hurt matters.