Binghamton has always flown under the radar. A good school, yes, a great value, obviously, but this University has rarely garnered national attention.

We’re a state school, and a young one at that, but in my estimation, the two main reasons for our anonymity are as follows: (1) we’re not a sports school and (2) we seem to have always done the right thing.

Our situation, though, has changed. Our pursuit to reverse the former has also sadly shattered the latter. And the world, now, is watching.

From The New York Times to The Huffington Post to ESPN, Binghamton University is disgracefully gracing the headlines.

But from what I’ve seen and heard, the impact of the basketball scandal on the collective mind of the student body is negligible. It’s not a subject of gossip or conversation, or even Facebook status updates. Many don’t know the details of the audit, and others still have never even heard of it.

It would be natural and predictable in this kind of column to preach: “Come on guys, get off your asses,” or “Pay attention to the news!” etc. But I think it would be more productive not to attempt to vainly change the status quo, but to question how it came to be.

Why don’t we care?

Some call the basketball controversy the biggest news story in our school’s history. And, albeit with a very limited perspective, I agree. It encompasses 10 years of scandal, with intrigue from top to bottom. It includes our moment in the bright lights of the Big Dance and the drama of how it all came crashing down.

It’s actually a compelling tale and, more importantly, it happened right here. So why don’t we care?

Obviously, there’s no simple answer to this question, if there is one at all. Again, I have a limited perspective and cannot, with any certainty, make an attempt at an explanation. The question itself may be arbitrary.

Still though, I’ll venture a few guesses, if only to compensate for my own apathy. I, personally, am bothered less by the scandal than I think I ought to be and would honestly like to know why.

The simplest answer to my complicated question is that, well, no one knows enough about it. It isn’t hard to imagine that students would be more upset if they were made aware of just how deep the scandal goes.

The second possible explanation (which, in my mind, is a good deal more depressing than the first) is that, maybe, we are simply accustomed to sports scandal. As a sophomore, the basketball team has been the subject of critical headlines since before I got here and — in one way or another — nearly constantly since.

Many students at Binghamton have never heard anything positive about the program, except for its brief winning ways. The culmination of the scandal — the audit — may just seem, to many, like old news.

But my final attempt at an answer, unlike the others, is maybe even a little encouraging. If pressed, this would be my answer to why we don’t seem to care, if only because it makes me smile. Here it is:

Binghamton doesn’t care about a sports scandal because Binghamton never has, doesn’t now and never will care about sports.

If this is true, then the administration’s pursuit of athletic prominence was not only entirely mishandled in execution, but also completely deluded from the start.

I try to look at it this way. If a scandal of this magnitude were revealed at an actual sports school, the student body would be gravely disturbed. But at Binghamton, no one cares. We’re not a sports school and, to us, it really, really doesn’t matter.

Maybe the scandal doesn’t bother us because the administration’s attempt to create an athletic tradition never mattered to us at all.

But that’s an optimistic maybe. It’s more likely that I’m extracting this sports apathy, projecting to avoid conceding that we may just not care much about anything. And yes, that may be a tad strong. But if we can’t even get a little upset over something like this, I wonder what it takes.

Not that I care, really.