[C]ongratulations on the new contract extension — it’s quite the accomplishment.

Not many Connecticut residents can boast about getting a 25 percent increase in salary as a reward for a less-than-stellar year — especially your fellow state employees, many of whom are taking furlough days and foregoing pay increases because of the state’s fiscal crisis.

[M]issing seven games over a 23-day period, finishing the season with an 18-16 mark and a second-round NIT loss, and an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting violations, and yet still pocketing a $400,000 pay increase, is something. That is, at least, how we understand the new five-year, $13 million extension is defined — retroactive to this past season with a salary increase from $1.6 million to $2 million.

And then another raise, $2.3 million, for the coming year…

U Conn basketball is constantly in trouble – mainly recruiting violation trouble, but throw in failure to meet academic standards – with the NCAA.

Its last coach – fired under the pressure of the most recent, ongoing, NCAA investigation – is suing the school for ten million dollars because his predecessor as coach, the sainted Jim Calhoun, was really a far sleazier figure, but was treated far better by the university.

Which is correct. Calhoun was significantly more disgusting (though, in fairness, Calhoun coached U Conn for many more years than Kevin Ollie, so had much more time to collect violations) than Ollie, so why should Ollie not get the ten million left on his contract?

Lawsuits, NCAA investigations – and probably, eventually, investigations from a US Attorney or two. Life of the mind, USA.

Was U Conn so desperate to recruit a new member for its ski team (the dude skis) that it accepted a drunk and disorderly shitski from famously drunk, disorderly, and riotous Zoo Mass? A student who was arrested twice at that fabled campus?

Was the guy expelled from U Mass? Is that why he transferred to U Conn?

By which UD means: Did U Mass, crawling with foul drunks just like this foul drunk, actually find Luke Gatti behaviorally unworthy of that puke- and booze-soaked campus?

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Guess it’s all relative. In the case of U Conn, when the highest paid, highest profile, most beloved person at your school produces viral videos like this (when U Conn coach Jim Calhoun retired, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house), little Luke’s viral video maybe fails to impress.

It has certainly impressed everyone outside of U Conn… Proving once again that it’s true what they say: Sports really are the front porch of the American university.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary, as Stephen Foster put it. The guy in this post’s title wants to know why he can’t just love his Vikings and not have to think about being one of millions of Minnesota taxpayers who’ve given hundreds of millions of dollars to the team’s racketeering owner, Zygi Wilf.

Zygi is one of Yeshiva University’s most honored trustees. He is part of the Yeshiva University tradition of having its trustees called “evil” by judges. First Bernard Madoff and now Zygi have inspired some of America’s finest jurists to rise to this rhetorical occasion…

(Update: Yeshiva’s main campus is named after the Wilf family. Yikes.)

But back to our headline. Like it or not, your sports news – university sports, professional sports – will always be saturated with – imbricated with (to use an English major word) – criminal news. This being the case, UD proposes that MFA programs at sports factories offer not just instruction in Minimalism, but also instruction in Criminalism, a prose style in which you entertainingly interweave afternoons at the arena with evenings in jail.

There is a good deal to study here. UD has been a student of criminalist prose for years and has accumulated a syllabus-full of methods, approaches, points of view. She’s particularly intrigued by the style she calls Coacha Inconsolata, a mournful account of the sufferings of coaches who through no fault of their own recruited drunks and flunkies to the team and of course to the school. Here’s a very recent example. The trick is to focus not on the totally foreseeable stupidity and criminality of the recruit, but rather on the shocked and hurt coach.

Here are some excerpts, with commentary from Scathing Online Schoolmarm.

U Conn [basketball] center Tyler Olander has put Kevin Ollie in a difficult position … [This is the beginning of the first sentence of the article. Start right off not with the player, but with the coach. It’s unseemly to dwell on jailed players — too many of them, doesn’t look good, challenges alumni to keep loving the team — so dwell rather on the sacrificial agonies of the coaches.] Legendary coach Jim Calhoun had already left Ollie with a underwhelming and thinning front line. Now, calling that front line “thinning” is like a bald man using the comb over. It’s approaching nonexistent. [Next move: Recall the impossibly big shoes into which the coach must step. Legendary Jim! You only have to watch this famous clip to understand how beloved, how amazing, Calhoun was… Poor Ollie! Left only with thinning hair.] Olander was UConn’s only big man left on the roster with any sort of real experience. The Huskies had already lost veteran Enosch Wolf, who had his scholarship taken away for his own legal issues… [If you’re not blubbering by this point, you’ve got a heart of stone. What is this good and great man, this Job of the jocks, supposed to do?]

Just continue like that if you want to write Coacha Inconsolata criminalism: The writer here goes on to talk about the coach’s “major headache,” the way he’s “scrambling” to do a good job, and how “This is not what he had to have in mind when he laid out his plan” for greatness. Do not touch on the question of how it is that anyone entering a major university sports coaching position lays out non-criminogenic plans for greatness. Do not ask how anyone could possibly be that stupid. Just go with the Job thing.

… have columns facing one another and playing off one another nicely. The Social Contract, headlines Krugman; The Amateur Ideal, headlines Brooks. Both writers want to say that in some realms of life capitalism’s competitive market ethos should be suspended; that, underlying all of the purely financial contracting among us, a social contract impels us to act in self-sacrificing ways for the good of the polity.

David Brooks regards the university as one of the most social contracty places in America, and well he might. Universities are non-profits, enjoying immense tax and other advantages, because the state defines them as privileged locations of social good. Unlike the justly detested for-profit schools, universities aren’t in it to make a buck. They’re dedicated to educating people. Brooks even thinks they have a moral mission:

As many universities have lost confidence in their ability to instill character, the moral mission of the university has withered.

UD understands how religious schools might perceive themselves as having explicitly moral missions (Catholic Seton Hall, for example, despite having had to blast more imprisoned alumni names off of buildings than any other school in America, and having hired one of the foulest coaches known to humankind, presumably sees itself in this way.) but she does not believe the non-religious university has – or should have – a moral mission. See Clifford Orwin for a nice expression of her views.

Brooks says what he says about withering because he, like everyone else, sees the amoral hypercapitalist joke amateur university sports (basketball and football, that is) has become. He laments, in a pointless way, the withering of the character-rich amateur university sports tradition. Couldn’t we bring that back? Its “lingering vestiges”? Even in the face of billion dollar tv contracts?

Lingering vestiges. Aren’t they kind of like whispering hope? Durn pretty language. But really.

How is Brooks going to gather up and preserve the lingering vestiges? Reverse the ten-year, billion-dollar contracts? Has Brooks noticed what the most popular major in America is? It’s business. Brooks doesn’t exactly have his finger on the pulse of the American student:

College basketball is more thrilling than pro basketball because the game is still animated by amateur passion, not coldly calculating professional interests.

No – it’s thrilling because it’s played by essentially professional players who are really good. And listen: Who spouts moral mission language at the university? It really isn’t faculty, or even administration. It’s precisely the clever sports programs. Go there – to your six-million-dollar coaches and money-under-the-table boosters – for all of the moral mission, character-building language you can stomach. UD‘s been there – at a host of university sports conferences – and she’s heard it all. If Brooks wants to play right into the hands of Nick Saban he can go on gassing about moral character. Nick’s right there with you. He’s been there waiting for you.

Until we can pivot our eyes back to what universities are – intellectual institutions – we’re going to stay all misty-eyed as Nick Saban and Jim Calhoun (Coach sets an example, you know! Here’s one of Calhoun’s hero recruits. Really made good. Lectures British civil servants! All because of the early example set by the richest public employee in the state of Connecticut!) lecture us on how universities are places that make us better men.

I’ll write about Krugman in a moment.

Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel.

[University of Central Florida] basketball coach Donnie Jones is being accused of using a convicted felon with ties to a sports agent as a conduit to funnel big-name recruits into his program.

Sadly, my first response when I read this story in The New York Times Saturday was this: Doesn’t everybody?

… At this point, it’s impossible to know if Jones is breaking the rules or simply pushing the envelope. And, frankly, when you look at the sad state of the NCAA, does it really matter?

Auburn, the national football champion, had a star player who somehow kept his eligibility and won the Heisman Trophy despite the fact that his father tried to sell his services for $180,000.

UConn, the national basketball champion, has a coach in Jim Calhoun who will be suspended for a grand total of three games next year despite the fact that the NCAA says he runs a cheating program that “fails to promote an atmosphere of compliance.”

John Calipari has been in charge of two different programs that had to vacate their Final Four appearances because of NCAA violations. He now holds the premier job in college basketball at Kentucky…

Imagine vomiting forever.

… Someone, whether it’s George Blaney, Tim Tolokan, his family, somebody who loves and cares about [University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun] has got to tell him to extend this any longer will do the state’s flagship university no good. This no longer can be a case where the coach lifts his leg, squirts on the NCAA like it is a fire hydrant and shrugs at a complicated rulebook.

… Kelvin Sampson at Indiana, Bruce Pearl at Tennessee, Butch Davis at North Carolina, schools will go to great lengths to protect valuable investments. So what UConn did in backing Calhoun isn’t shocking, although the hundreds of thousands in legal costs are.

… [The illegally recruited student] was expelled from the school — over the coach’s strenuous objections — after allegations [he] had abused a female student and violated a restraining order 16 minutes after receiving it. [The student] played no games…

The taste of Jim Calhoun still lingers on the palate; Robert Burton’s letter echoes in the ear; and now there’s Professor Kenneth Dautrich. All at the University of Connecticut.

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(UD thanks Dave for the link to the Burton letter.)

… Fatiguée, as Nigella Lawson notes, is what the French call greens that have lost their crispness, from sitting around too long, or from too much dressing.

Writing can be wilted in the same ways – from sitting around too long, or from being drizzled with too many words.

The problem of tired writing compounds when your subject is itself superannuated.

Yet most subjects are old.  Not much crisp under the sun.  The point of being a good writer is taking something new to the plate.  Plumping things up so people see some aspect of the world fresh.

Consider, for instance, a seasonal problem.

Everyone knows big time university basketball is a rank enseamèd dish, stew’d in corruption.  Every March sports writers get up on little ladders and scrounge in their pantries for the canned indignation.

But why?  Why do that?  Limp writing makes nothing happen.  It’s mere ritual.  It’s filing a story because you’ve got space to fill by Tuesday.  Jim Calhoun has a job to do, and so do you.

But if you had the scruples whose lack you attack in Calhoun, you wouldn’t inflict this sort of futility on your readers.

… From showcase summer camps, to AAU tournaments, to street agents, to runners from professional agents, this is the landscape schools live in. This is the basketball culture, and for all of the NCAA’s attempts to control it, it always seems to get worse, a cesspool of inherent corruption. To the point where the NCAA recently ruled that a seventh-grader is now regarded as a “recruitable” athlete.

Think about that for a second.

Which is not to say that all schools break the rules.

It is to say, though, that this is the basketball world all schools operate in, to the point where virtually all big-time programs are fragile, a deck of cards that has the potential to crumble at any minute, whether it’s off-campus problems, allegations of recruiting violations, rumors of being carried academically, or other supposed atrocities that highlight the fact that players often are not like the other students on campus, regardless of the hype to try to convince people that there are.

Suffice it to say there are no virgins here.

Let’s scathe through that, shall we?

“From showcase summer camps, to AAU tournaments, to street agents, to runners from professional agents, this is the landscape schools live in. [The list’s okay, though all the tos are a bit awkward. Ending on in is weak; remember that you always want to end your sentence on a strong word.   And keep an eye on that landscape metaphor.] This is the basketball culture, [This is. This is. Repetition can be effective, but in this case it feels weak, in part because the language is so blah. We begin to doubt the writer’s conviction.]  and for all of the NCAA’s attempts to control it, it always seems to get worse, a cesspool of inherent corruption.  [It gets worse because the NCAA doesn’t attempt to control it, so here the writer signals his refusal to take on the heavy labor of actual critique. Things get more tired by the minute.   And a cesspool of inherent corruption tells you everything you need to know about l’écriture fatiguée.  Forget the quick transmutation of a landscape into a cesspool, and think instead about the lazy effort to lend a lifeless salad some life by suddenly spicing it way up.  Cesspool is a big ol’ word, way out there. You want to reserve it for something really big, like your suicide note (“Dear World,” wrote George Sanders, “I am leaving because I am bored.  I feel I have lived long enough.  I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool.  Good luck.”), or for a piece of your best writing, in which you demonstrate conviction.]

To the point where the NCAA recently ruled that a seventh-grader is now regarded as a “recruitable” athlete.  [Dump the quotation marks.]

Think about that for a second.

Which is not to say that all schools break the rules.

It is to say, though, that this is the basketball world all schools operate in, [Note the clumsy wordiness, the overuse of the to be verb, the ineffective repetition.]  to the point where virtually all big-time programs are fragile, a deck of cards  [Dead metaphor.]  that has the potential to crumble at any minute, whether it’s off-campus problems, allegations of recruiting violations, rumors of being carried academically, or other supposed atrocities [Tone problem.  What does he mean by calling these things supposed atrocities?  I don’t get it.] that highlight the fact that players often are not like the other students on campus, regardless of the hype to try to convince people that there are.  [There instead of they.  Mistakes will occur when you’re doing automatic writing.]

Suffice it to say there are no virgins here.  [Off we go to another dead metaphor.]”

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Update:  UD is grateful to James, a reader, for pointing out that both of her fatiguées take an extra e.

No, James.  You are not a pest.

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Another Update:  This is more like it.  The guy actually cares.

SOS is always screaming that at you. Your writing is you. It is extremely revelatory.

Good writers realize this and learn how to control the effect they make. Whatever sort of SOB you may in reality be, you have to learn how to control your prose so as to come across as the sort of person your reader will — let’s say you’re writing a polemical piece — agree with.

Poor writers, like the sap below, cannot help revealing themselves in ways damaging to their argument. Let’s see how they do this.

A former trustee at the University of Connecticut wishes to come to the defense of the university’s basketball coach, the highest-paid public employee in the state, and a motherfucker.

How to do this?

Well, not this way.

*************************************

“I have read and heard with irritation [Lordy, lordy. Just how many times has ol’ SOS told you that emotion is the enemy of argumentation? First sentence! I’m irritated! And who talks like this? What’s the tone? From the very, very start, what’s the tone? Queen Victoria, that’s the tone. Pompous. Vaguely bullying. Way to step up to the plate.] the attacks on the University of Connecticut’s men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun and his reaction to quizzing about his income, his university-approved outside income opportunities, and a suggestion that he take a cut in salary to aid the university in its current financial crisis.

I would like to provide my perspective on Jim Calhoun and his relationship and importance to the university. [Drop this sentence. Totally unnecessary, and somehow adds to the sense of irritable self-importance.]

During the 1990s, Jim Calhoun was one of the five most valuable individuals in bringing interest to the university and in raising awareness of the value of the university to the state’s economy. [Cruel of the newspaper to run this without edits. Individual is a deadly word, labored and impersonal. And note the vagueness of the repeated word value, and the empty word interest. This is inhuman prose. This is a stiff bureaucrat.] In particular, the successes Coach Calhoun directed on the court have played a pivotal role in the state’s providing $2 billion support to rebuild the University of Connecticut, both physically and academically.

Jim Calhoun is also in the first tier of individuals I’ve known during the past 20 years who have given the most significant portion of their time and resources, including their money, back to UConn. [Individuals again. And it doesn’t matter how much money you give back. It matters how much money you’re overpaid. This is the Massa Saban approach to university life: Give obscene compensation to coaches and then, when the shit hits the fan and they give a little back to save their ass, praise the coach as a great benefactor.] While facing repeated health issues of his own, there has never been a “no” in Jim Calhoun’s vocabulary [Never been a “no.” Writing like this gives everyone health issues. And note the Queen for a Day form of defense here: You bastards are going after a sick man! Yet Calhoun looked mighty strong the other day, when he said no with very little effort to a reporter. No, I won’t return a penny of my compensation to the state. No No. No. Said no a whole lot. Definitely has the word in his vocabulary.] concerning his support of the health center, the cardiology center, the fight against cancer and the battle to overcome autism. [Note the absolutely dead trite language. Battle to overcome autism. Of course, this is about clueless self-importance, too. The writer actually thinks you’re stupid enough to take out your hankie at this point and demand a salary increase for Calhoun.]

I do not curse; so from time to time, I too blanch when Jim expresses his competitiveness and passion in his interaction with his players. [Things are going from worse to worser. We might be able to consider the writer a human being like ourselves, despite his robotic prose, if he cursed. But he doesn’t. Or he feels it’s a clever move to tell us he doesn’t. Interaction goes beautifully with individual in this man’s utterly unreal and unfeeling world.] I have many friends, but I dare say that their friendship and loyalty to me does not exceed the loyalty, friendship, respect and love that is evident from the players who have experienced Jim’s rants as well as his genuine caring. [Just because the Connecticut team is composed of masochists doesn’t mean I should admire their sadist.] From Clifford Robinson to Donyell Marshall to Kevin Ollie to Ray Allen to Rip Hamilton to Caron Butler to Emeka Okafor and all the rest of Huskies from the Calhoun era: Each of their lives and careers have benefited from the contact and mentoring from their coach.

During my tenure as chairman of the board of trustees at UConn, it was vividly clear to me that, from a straight dollar vantage point, Jim Calhoun more than meets the test of value given for dollars received, apart from his giving of his time and money. The investment in Jim Calhoun by the university has been repaid to UConn, and the entire state, many times over.

In 1986, no one believed that Connecticut could become one of the truly elite college basketball programs in the country. The pride that an entire state now possesses because of UConn’s basketball success is priceless. And the entertainment value provided by the Huskies is priceless. [To be sure, every citizen swells with pride because one of its university teams wins games. Also because the team’s coach has been reprimanded by the governor and is the object of hostile legislation from state representatives.]

The national spotlight that basketball success has been able to shine on the words Connecticut and UConn is also priceless. [Well, I suspect Calhoun’s cost will be able to be reckoned. Let’s see what the legislature has to say about it.]

The UConn Athletic Department recently signed important, budget-assisting 10-year agreements with outside contractors in the apparel/footwear (Nike) and corporate partner programs (IMG). Does anyone doubt that the presence of Jim Calhoun as our Hall of Fame, two-time national championship coach played a pivotal role in the desire of those companies to align themselves with UConn athletics? [We can take pride in these commercial arrangements!]

Jim Calhoun has given back and will continue to give back to the University of Connecticut, always providing that “giving” in his own private style. [Quotation marks around “giving” just right, as Calhoun gives the state the finger in his own private style.]”

[University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim] Calhoun pointing to the amount of income UConn men’s basketball generates for the university exemplifies a capitalist society: The market defines the worth.

Got it, baby? Can we make it even simpler?

At a university, market value = worth.

Okay?

So shut up about Calhoun.

… before the trash bigtime sports has hauled into the American university literalized itself.

… at the University of Connecticut, whose head coach, captured on Youtube, shows you how to behave.