Greg Nold and Quincy Emery introduced a dynamic force that our Sacred Heart CYO high school basketball team hadn’t ever possessed. They were athletic, fast, powerful – and tall. They helped us steamroll our way through the six-game regular season unscathed and for the first time in memory we earned the league’s No. 1 seed in the NSCYOHSBL (North Shore Catholic Youth Organization High School Basketball League) playoffs.

Due to reasons not suitable for print, I slept through the alarm clock and missed the 8:15 Sunday morning tipoff for our first round playoff clash with St. Mary of the Woods.

Good thing, it turned out.

There was only one problem with our Nold/Emery secret weapons – they were members of our high school’s actual varsity basketball team. Just prior to tip, the ref – a pregnant guidance counselor at one of the neighboring junior high schools – blew the whistle and announced that Sacred Heart was ineligible for further play due to egregious rules violations. Our coach, 28-year old Chaz Colbert, stood there stunned. The entire team – my six other teammates who were present – knew the gig was up.

When I asked Nold and Emery to join our church league team, was I aware of the rule that made varsity basketball players ineligible? Vaguely. But this was, after all, a Catholic league – rules were meant to be broken.

When word of the scandal spread throughout the parish, there was only one way to salvage the family name.

My dad did interviews with the local press and released statements through our agent assuring everyone that his son had integrity and character.

“Crowley is a young man who knows what it means to uphold the integrity of the Catholic Church by adhering to the rules of the NSCYOHSBL bylaws as created by Fathers Raftery and O’Malley – and he keeps in mind the amendments that were made to those bylaws right after Vatican II. As I stand here before you all, I assure you my son has integrity.”

My dad came through for me. That was his job then just as it’s my job now to support my own son if his integrity is questioned.

Recently, when St. Bede The Venerable principal Ralph Valente whispered to me in the parking lot at pickup that my second grade son had not touched third base during a recess kickball game, yet didn’t own up to it when the third grade opponents challenged the ruling by the 4th grade umpire, I grabbed my bullhorn out of the trunk of my car and announced to everyone in the parking lot – right then and there – that my son had integrity, character, and an acute understanding of the ethical glue that keeps the integrity of the sport of kickball together.

Fathers know best.

They always have and they always will. It’s why I admire any father that comes to the rescue of his wrongly – or even rightly – accused son when that son is faced with the heavy burden of a rules-related scandal within athletics. One doesn’t have to think very hard to recall the many times college athletes have owed a debt of gratitude to their fathers for assuring the world of their integrity.

The morning after Chris Webber called time out in the waning moments of the NCAA championship game against North Carolina, it was Webber’s father who held a press conference in front of hordes of media and announced, with passion and conviction,

“My son knows how to count. “

Or something like that.

“He knows what the ramifications are when a player calls timeout when his team has no timeouts. He was duped into calling that timeout by a member of his own team who specifically told him that the team had three timeouts left. My son, in my eyes, is a national champion this morning.”

Who could forget when Woody Hayes’s father spoke to the press the morning after his son punched Charlie Bauman in the throat for having the gall to intercept that pass in the Gator Bowl? As I recall it, and my memory might be hazy, Woody’s father said something like, “My son has character and integrity that is beyond reproach. Just because he punched that nineteen year-old college football player in the Adam’s apple portion of his throat on the field of play while the game was still, in fact, being played doesn’t mean he doesn’t have integrity and character. He does. He has both of those things – integrity and character. The reason I know this is because I am his father.”

Of course, there was the time when Bob Knight’s father came to his aide the day after The General threw that chair across the gym floor at a very critical moment in the first six minutes of a game against Purdue.

Father Knight, as I recall it, but it might be fuzzy, said to the gathering of press on the front lawn of the Knight household in Orville, Ohio, “Aside from the fact that I am here to assure everyone that my son has integrity and character, I am also here to say that I challenge the notion that my son actually threw that chair. The entire alleged incident was the result of a magic trick played by the gremlins inside of my Zenith television set. My son knows the meaning of integrity.”

In retrospect, the 1987 scene involving all of fathers of the SMU football coaches, administrators, boosters, and some players almost seems as if it didn’t really even happen. The fathers of athletic director Bob Hitch and head coach Bobby Collins sat up on an elegant dais in downtown Dallas and addressed the national media as they assured the world that their sons had not been a part of anything that would bring shame to college football, Southern Methodist University, or their own family names. Bob Hitch’s father was particularly eloquent when he said, at least how I remember it, speaking through a very stiff upper lip and a quivering chin, “My son has more integrity than a Texas toad has perspiration condensation on his back while sitting on a hot rock in August.” You could hear a pin drop in that auditorium when Dad Hitch uttered those words of support for his son.

Whether a young man – or a middle-aged man – throws a chair during a NCAA-sanctioned basketball game or commits a physical act of aggression perhaps worthy of jail time during a college football post season bowl game or harmlessly attempts to call a time out his team doesn’t possess during a college basketball national championship game, the fact is that a father can and should shout from the mountain tops to the universe that his son’s integrity should not be questioned.

When I think back to the way I flaunted my naïve arrogance at the NSCYOHSBL it does make me question my thought process a bit. But, when I continue thinking about the scandal, my conscience is washed of any contrition when I recall the courageous and proud way in which my dad stood before the community and announced that whosoever should question his son’s integrity should do so at his or her own peril.

My dad knew exactly how to handle the situation and he demonstrated maturity and class by expediently stepping forward and giving the doubters and skeptics a piece of his mind. That piece of his mind is only one small reason I’m the man I am today. Thanks, Dad.

Tom, thank your dad, too.