In case you weren't aware, on Saturday the University of Miami football team got into a hellacious on-field brawl during the middle of its game against Florida International University (you can see it all here on YouTube). Despite the nastiness of the episode, which resulted in the suspension of 13 Miami players (and another 18 from FIU), Donna Shalala, the former head of HHS who is now President of the University of Miami, appeared at a team press conference to defend her students:

''I believe that the young men we have recruited for our football team are young men of great character, but they did a very bad thing,'' Shalala said. ". . .It's time for me to say publicly that I believe in them, that I believe that they did something awful, but that I want them to continue at the University of Miami. And it's time for me to say to the community and to those that have been sending me e-mails that this university will be firm and punish people that do bad things.

"But we will not throw any student under the bus for instant restoration of our image or our reputation. I will not hang them in a public square. I will not eliminate their participation at the university. I will not take away their scholarships. . .

If only the President of Duke University, Richard Broadhead, had said something similar in the aftermath of the affair with the lacrosse team.

Cleary, what happened in Miami is vastly different than a he said-she said rape allegation, but Broadhead's knee-jerk reaction to believe the word of a stripper over his students, to cancel the season and expel members of the team from the University without giving them so much as a chance to defend themselves and prove their innocence is reprehensible and unforgivable.

As we've seen from watching the course of the investigation, it's looking more and more like three boys have had their lives destroyed by a false allegation put into the hands of an irresponsible and abusive prosecutor. Duke's President shares the blame - and the shame - for the way this case has gone by throwing these kids under the bus right from the start.