VESTAL, N.Y. Three years ago, Binghamton University students swarmed onto the floor of the Events Center here, celebrating the school's first appearance in the N.C.A.A. tournament. The university had made the expensive and controversial decision to compete at the Division I level less than a decade earlier, and it seemed that the gamble had paid off. Rebecca Catlett/Press & Sun-Bulletin, via Associated Press Mike Horn, center, and Binghamton went 1-28 in the regular season. Last week, Binghamton students stormed the court again, though this time it was more of a collective exercise in sarcasm: a victory over Vermont snapped the university’s 27-game losing streak, the longest in Division I. For the Bearcats, who finished the regular season at 1-28, the gatherings on the court three years apart bracketed one of the uglier recent tales of college sports, as big-time problems infected a small-time athletic department. Shortly after that fleeting moment of glory in 2009, the university’s basketball program unraveled. Binghamton, part of the State University of New York system, has been cleaning up and paying out millions ever since. The president, provost, two top athletic officials and the men’s basketball head coach have all been replaced amid a scandal that proved costly to both the university’s reputation and its bottom line. “At what price glory?” said Tom Brennan, a former coach at Vermont, which plays in the same conference as Binghamton, the America East. “They may just be a little car on the big highway, but they were emblematic of what goes on at a whole lot of places. To see where they ended up, it’s sad to see.” Like any number of universities, Binghamton gambled on too many high-risk high school recruits and transfer students with histories of arrests and academic problems. In short order, Binghamton faced accusations of academic fraud and off-court issues that ranged from the absurd (the theft of condoms) to serious (the starting point guard Tiki Mayben was arrested for the sale and possession of crack cocaine). The Mayben arrest prompted Binghamton to dismiss six players from the team in the fall of 2009, and the program has struggled ever since. It was hit with a postseason ban and scholarship restrictions related to academic issues. The downward spiral culminated with this season’s embarrassing finish at the bottom of one of the country’s least competitive athletic conferences. The full drama was captured in a damning 99-page investigative report by New York State’s former chief judge, Judith Kaye. It cost the state university system nearly a million dollars just for Kaye to sort out the wrongdoing. Her report showed how a lack of oversight from the president and athletic director allowed the program to spin out of control. It read like a Grisham novel, as athletic administrators pressured the admissions office with questions like, “Why do you care if we take six players who don’t attend classes?” Basketball players were given academic credit for courses like Theories of Softball and Bowling I. “I couldn’t put it down,” the new Binghamton president, Harvey Stenger, said of the report. The repercussions from the scandal were felt throughout the administration and the athletic department, as the reputations of several Binghamton leaders were tarnished by the scandal. Lois DeFleur, the university president, retired. Mary Ann Swain, the provost, stepped down to return to teaching. Athletic Director Joel Thirer resigned soon after Mayben’s arrest and returned to teaching. Coach Kevin Broadus was suspended with pay and his contract was eventually bought out. The contract of the senior associate athletic director, Jason Siegel, was not renewed. (Siegel and another athletic department official were accused of sexual harassment by a department fund-raiser, and the university settled for $280,000.) “I think it’s very telling that the depth of the whole thing, the extent of it was so pervasive that in order to cleanse the system they had to get rid of all those people,” said Bruce Svare, a psychology professor at SUNY Albany. “They had no other choice.”