Sometimes, indeed, UD thinks the American university is a piety. One big piety. One big piety-location in a country impious about most other locations.
You can see campus piety most vividly in athletics and in Greek life. These vast, troubled realms share the quality of the sacred that has to do with mysterious and intense fellowship and bonding over a lifetime, with convoluted and exclusive rituals, with the spilling of wine and the spilling of blood.
Even when hazing, player abuse, and other forms of destructive behavior corrupt these realms, universities tend to respond slowly, or not at all.
In justifying inaction or inadequate action, administrators often cite precisely the fervency, the devotion, students and alumni bring to teams and traditions.
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Campus piety can play out more quietly, but just as treacherously, in the realm of social justice.
To their credit, many universities regard themselves as more aware of and responsive to local and global inequality and violence than the rest of the country. They are rightly proud of their idealistic and engaged students. Yet again and again, these same campuses are exploited by cynics who understand how piety can play out.
From the time I began writing this blog – a time that coincided with the Kerri Dunn story at Pomona – I have chronicled sociopaths who set up shop on American campuses and make a good living until someone looks more closely at what they’re up to.
Here’s the most recent case, reported in the Sacramento Bee.
A former University of California, Davis, employee whom officials have accused of inflating crime statistics may have funneled university money into a private account and paid her mortgage with it, campus police said in a court document released this week.
As part of their embezzlement probe of Jennifer Beeman, investigators also raised the question of whether she had appropriately paid $540,000 to a Bay Area woman and her companies over a seven-year period.
… Police detailed their suspicions regarding Beeman, the former director of the UC Davis Campus Violence Prevention Program [She ran it for sixteen years.], in court papers filed as they sought a search warrant in early December.
… Beeman, 52, first came under scrutiny in September 2008 for overstating her travel expenses.
Further investigation showed that she had asked for reimbursement for airfare to San Diego when her ticket had already been paid for by an outside group. She had also submitted travel mileage for meetings she did not attend, Henoch wrote.
University officials requested an internal audit and placed Beeman on administrative leave.
In February 2009, the audit concluded that Beeman had improperly submitted travel expenses of more than $1,000.
In October, campus officials said she had repaid $1,372 and retired in June.
On the same day, they also revealed Beeman had grossly inflated the number of forcible sexual offenses in three years of mandatory reports to the federal government.
… Administrators also said in October that police were pursuing a second investigation into Beeman’s finances.
[I]nvestigators had learned in early 2009 that Beeman had a “secret” checking account for a campus program called Take Back the Night.
Beeman told a co-worker that she had paid her home mortgage from the account, he wrote.
The account was located in July at the USE Credit Union, with Beeman listed as the only signatory, the police sergeant said in his statement.
Auditors found that nearly $12,000 in university funds had been deposited into the account, and Beeman had withdrawn $5,400 for personal use between January 2002 to March 2009, Henoch wrote.
The auditors also found that Beeman had authorized $25,000 in payments of federal grant funds to a company run by a woman named Granate Sosnoff to produce a campus anti-violence guide that was never completed, he wrote.
In November, Henoch said he discovered that the Campus Violence Prevention Program had paid Sosnoff and various media and marketing firms that she controlled more than $540,000 between May 2000 and April 2007…
Beeman “fabricated a total of 108 sex offense reports over three years.” The Center for Public Integrity writes:
[We interviewed] several dozen victim advocates at campuses across the country. Many said they aimed to facilitate reporting of sexual assault in order to make students feel that they had options in pursuing justice, and to reduce the incidence of rape on campus. Some also said that higher rates of reporting helped them make the point that sexual assault deserved attention and funding.
“Administrators want to know where the problems are,” said Elie Axelroth, head of counseling at California Polytechnic State University, which reported zero forcible sex offenses in 2008. “If we can’t show that sexual assault is a problem, then we’re not going to get the resources. That’s just the practicality of it.”
A local blog provides details on Beeman’s statistics inflation. It first quotes from a 2007 Sacbee article praising Beeman:
For 2005, the most recent crime data available, UC Davis reported 50 sexual offenses on or near the Davis campus and its Sacramento medical center — three times greater than other UC schools.
Jennifer Beeman, who heads the sexual-assault prevention program at UC Davis, said at first glance, the statistics make the campus look like “the rape capital of the world.”
“What that tells me is those students on those (other) campuses don’t know where to go for help,” she said. “If people know where to go, your numbers are going to go up. We just have more people who come forward and more people who get help.”
The blog considers the numbers:
According to the university’s internal review and independent, outside review, UC Davis reported 48, 68 and 69 forcible sex offenses in 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively. However, based on the two recent reviews, UC Davis has determined that the correct statistics for each of the years are less than half those numbers: 21 reported in 2005, 23 in 2006 and 33 in 2007.
How does this happen? Should those statistics have been a red flag to the university that something was amiss? After all the stats were used to tout the Campus Violence Prevention Program.
The blog writers are duly scandalized that Beeman had sole control over collection and reporting. They further note that “the numbers themselves never seemed to trigger any sort of suspicion. [Administrators] just sort of accepted them. The problem came forward only when a staff member began compiling… statistics for the 2008 calendar year and noticed a discrepancy between the verified total and the reported total.”
The blog quotes from UC Davis:
UC Davis first became aware of a possible problem with the program’s reporting of its caseload of forcible sex offenses in April 2009, when a staff member there began compiling Clery statistics for the 2008 calendar year. The staffer was able to verify a total of 17 forcible sex offenses — significantly fewer than the 57 cases that the program reported in 2007 and the 52 cases it reported in 2006.
When the staff member alerted UC Davis Police to those concerns, the department launched its own review of the program’s case files for 2005, 2006 and 2007. The internal review was able to validate only 10 forcible sex offenses reported exclusively to the program in 2005, only 4 in 2006 and only 16 in 2007. In addition, the police department review could not find in the program’s files the remaining cases reported by the then-director in 2005, 2006 and 2007 as being subject to Clery Act reporting requirements.
Grotesquely disproportionate numbers; only one staff person controlling the numbers, and that person not even bothering to alter the files. And now it turns out she was embezzling too.
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Most forms of campus piety produce mere embarrassment, as in the Aliza Shvarts thing at Yale. That was aesthetic piety.
But this is political piety, and it blinded a university – for years – to a sociopath in its midst.
Not just blinded. This woman was admired.
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Beeman’s good press:
This 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article calls Beeman “meticulous,” and casts her as a model of responsible crime statistic reporting. Safer Campus, citing the Chronicle article, praises Beeman here.
… keeps on keeping on.
Never, not in my time, have I seen a crowd this small at a State game. There are better attended church socials.
I don’t know the actual attendance, although 12,647 was announced. No way there were more than 5,000. There weren’t 50 seats filled in the student section.
For a school that has put around 170 athletes into the NFL, it was beyond embarrassing. And, on top of it all, it was Retro Night, $6 tickets and $1 hot dogs. Probably still a few available….
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[The SDSU athletic director] is under fire for traveling for trysts with a married woman, while expensing the trips to San Diego State. That’s gotta be some kind of recruiting violation.
The Aztecs are looking into [his] travel records, after they were subpoenaed as part of a divorce trial.
“The suit is part of the divorce proceedings of John David Lineberger, whose wife, Carolyn, said under oath in deposition testimony that Schemmel had multiple sexual trysts with her in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Point Clear, Ala. A hotel bill paid by credit card in Point Clear in January lists Schemmel and “San Diego State Univ,” along with 5500 Campanile Dr. (SDSU’s address). It was for three nights, totaling $814.57.”
Have you ever been to Alabama? There’s no hotels there that are worth 270 bucks a night. That means San Diego State was likely paying for some champagne and strawberries with whipped cream, and perhaps some “mature films” at $20 a pop…
More on Stephen Weber and SDSU here.
UD thanks Dave for the second link.
That’s where it’s headed.
Want to know exactly how things will look in a few years? Read this, from a San Diego Union-Tribune article calling for the end of SDSU football:
[SDSU is part of a university system] facing major university-wide budget cutbacks in the coming years because of a dwindling state tax base.
[SDSU] relies on $15 million annually – you read that right, $15 million – in university or student subsidies for its athletic department to survive.
[It] has watched attendance and donor contributions steadily decline, and now faces rejuvenating them in a depressed economy.
[It] doesn’t have an on-campus stadium and currently has no lease with Qualcomm Stadium because the cash-strapped city refuses to continue losing hundreds of thousands of dollars hosting Aztecs games.
[It] has a student community largely apathetic toward intercollegiate athletics, evidenced by the meager attendance at sports events by its 34,000 enrollment.
But SDSU President Stephen Weber and Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel forge ahead undaunted, dutifully pouring money into their woebegone football program like they’re filling a backyard swimming pool, convinced the water will rise quicker than it is draining through the giant hole at the bottom.
They increased the football budget from $4.3 million in 1999 to a reported $7.5 million in 2006. They hired a new coach from Oklahoma (Long) and gave him a $716,000 annual salary. They gave the assistant coaches hefty raises as well from the previous group, to where a running backs coach was making $105,000 and the offensive coordinator was pulling in $185,000.
It didn’t work. The football team continued to lose, and the athletic department’s annual shortfall grew from about $750,000 in the late 1990s to $1 million to $2 million to $3.3 million last year.
Weber used millions from a presidential discretionary account to balance the athletics budget and promised it was a “one-time” bailout. Then he did it again the following year, and every year after that. When faculty members began clearing their throats and the discretionary account began running dry, he proposed another student-fee increase – from $190 to $350 per year – to inject an additional $4.5 million into athletics.
Weber didn’t put it to a student vote because he knew it would lose, just as the last proposed fee hike for athletics did. He unilaterally imposed that one anyway. On Dec. 3, he unilaterally imposed this one.
All this for a football team that went 2-10 this season, precipitating Long’s dismissal with two years remaining on his contract. Weber and Schemmel found boosters willing to chip in $1 million-plus to buy out Long, to drag their hoses to the pool and turn on the faucet.
But the hole in the bottom only gets bigger. BCS schools keep increasing their football budgets with the millions they get from network television contracts and bowl payouts, while minnows such as San Diego State try to compete with pennies. The average football budget at a BCS school in 2006, according to federal documents, was $14.3 million. San Diego State’s football budget, which is considered high for a non-BCS school, was half of that.
No wonder, then, that the Aztecs’ record against BCS schools since 2000 is 0-20. Or that they haven’t had a winning season or been to a bowl game in a decade…
As Berkeley’s faculty meets to protest its own athletics overspending, it should keep the model of San Diego State firmly in mind.
… school to get a sense of the way things are at San Diego State University these days.
But this student newspaper editorial captures life under President Stephen Weber pretty well. Excerpts:
… [T]he widely contested Instructionally Related Activities (IRA) Fee… has grown in leaps and bounds, much to the chagrin of students.
The IRA fee increased $160 from last year… It’s hard to imagine how such a fee could be imposed on students without their consent.
… I have never thought of athletics are being germane to my educational experience and most recently have only seen it as a hindrance to a quality education.
… The Education Code states [that the fee is] for a “basic competitive program.” It’s obvious that the University is using the fee directly or indirectly to cover salaries and other expenses associated not with a “basic” program, but for a program necessary to compete on a NCAA Div I stage. The major expense to point out is the head football coach’s salary, which for Chuck Long was $715,900. The bill anticipated this kind of misuse, which is why it includes the term “basic” so that this fee wasn’t used to fund an arms race in athletics…
Which is exactly what it’s being used for. And Chuck Long? Remember: He’s getting that money for doing nothing.
Six million, sixty million, who cares? Kansas taxpayers don’t. As long as they get their football.
Accusing Kansas State of “wanton and malicious misconduct,” lawyers for former football coach Ron Prince asked for more than $6 million in damages Monday and said it was the school, not Prince, who wanted a controversial contract to be confidential.
In their written response to a lawsuit filed against Prince by Kansas State, Prince’s attorneys also indicated that former Kansas State President Jon Wefald may have known about the agreement calling for Prince to be paid $3.2 million in deferred compensation between 2015-2020.
Kansas State filed suit in U.S. District Court in Topeka, Kan., in May seeking to void the agreement, claiming it was made in secret between Prince and former athletic director Bob Krause and without the knowledge of other university officers, including Wefald.
In documents filed Monday, Prince’s attorneys said the university agreed to guarantee a $1.2 million buyout and that the school’s Intercollegiate Athletic Council, headed by Krause, subsequently agreed to fund the $3.2 million in deferred compensation.
Prince, unpopular with players and fans, was fired last November with a 17-20 record, three months after signing a new five-year contract. He was replaced by former coach Bill Snyder…
If you think Wefald didn’t know, you must also think Peter Madoff had no idea what his brother was up to.
So … yet another saga of greed, lying, litigation, expense to students, and expense to the state. What’s the matter with Kansas State University? Same thing that’s the matter with San Diego State, Florida State, and Auburn. They’re jockholes.
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Update: Dave Stone, who’s in a much better position to know, says the taxpayers do care. Click on COMMENTS.
As a fuller picture of the assault against one San Diego State University football player by another emerges, and as details of the non-response and cover-up on the part of the coach hit the papers, UD just has to pause.
She has to pause.
It’s so bad. Looked at from any angle, the mafia-like code of silence, the absence of punishment for thugs who you need to protect the quarterback, the panicked firing of the coach as police interest grew, the university’s contractually necessary retention of the coach on campus in another job – a non-job for which he’s paid, for another few years, $715,000 a year – all of this, from any angle is so bad.
But if your angle happens to be that of the university — if you look at this culture of violence and impunity and waste from the point of view of what a university is — it’s much worse than bad.
No self-respecting student should apply to SDSU. Not as long as Stephen Weber is president. Weber, the Clown-in-Chief referred to in my headline (I found this description of him among the comments in response to the latest article about this escalating scandal) takes SDSU’s students’ money and uses it to pay millions of dollars to thugs. His record as president is appalling in its indifference to the quality of education, and of course the welfare, of the university’s students. He has dragged the place so far into the mud that you really can’t call it a university anymore. He has destroyed it.
… Nick Sandford had been playing a game in the locker room with another player, hitting a wadded-up cloth ball with a stick. Paul Sandford said Louis got in the way and his son poked Louis with the stick, which he didn’t like.
Louis, who weighed about 300 pounds, later sought Sandford, who weighed 210, and found him in a meeting room watching film. Louis came from behind, punched him in the side of the head, knocked him to the ground and kicked him, Paul Sandford said.
Corey Boudreaux, a senior safety on last year’s team, said he walked in as the altercation was ending. “There was a miscommunication in the locker room (where it originated). One of them got (ticked) off to the point where he did something about it.”
“The trainers couldn’t tell us anything and the coaches kind of didn’t tell us anything,” Boudreaux said. “Coaches told us not to worry about what was going on and not to listen to all the rumors and stuff. They said they were going to take care of it because they didn’t want us to get involved.”
Paul Sandford said he learned of the incident the night it happened, which was the Wednesday before the team was to play at Brigham Young University. He said he couldn’t reach Long before the team left for the game.
Sandford said the day after the BYU game, he told Long he thought the incident was a criminal assault and was concerned about his son’s safety. He said Long told him he wanted to keep it “in the Aztecs family.”
Sandford said he expected Long to handle it after that because it was Long’s responsibility as head coach. He also said it wasn’t a good idea at that time for anybody associated with the team to go against the coach’s wishes to keep the matter quiet. A few weeks earlier, Long had been assured by Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel of remaining as Aztecs coach through 2009.
“It’s not likely anybody was going to rock the boat from Nick’s particular end,” Paul Sandford said. “It would have put Nick at huge risk, plus there was potential for retaliation because Chuck was assured of coming back (through 2009).”
It’s unclear who contacted SDSU police. They list Paul Sandford as the reporting party, but Sandford said he believes others told police first.
“Nick was called and I went down there with Nick and met with them,” he said.
Sandford said many of those who knew what happened, including his son’s doctors, were surprised when Louis started the Nov. 8 game at BYU.
“Every game we went to, quite a few people asked why (Louis) was still playing,” Sandford said.
When Louis played again the next week against Utah, Sandford said it prompted a doctor to ask Nick Sandford’s permission to tell the SDSU administration.
The incident was reported to police that week, before the season’s final game against UNLV on Nov. 22. Long was informed he was fired the morning of that game. In an interview with reporters Nov. 26, Schemmel said he made up his mind to fire Long on Nov. 20, which is the day the incident was reported to university police…
A university can be good or bad; intellectually impressive or dull; provincial or urbane. It has only been with the importation of para-professional football to the university that it has become, in some of its manifestations, a thoroughly criminal subculture, with all the marks of that subculture: rule by thuggery, and strict control of insiders through intimidation. You almost want to cry, reading that line about a doctor wanting to tell the SDSU administration. A doctor who presumably saw the injuries in question.
There’s a developing story about a possible felony battery charge against a former San Diego State University football player. When he was on the team, Lance Louis “allegedly assaulted the SDSU starting safety Nick Sandford,” who “suffered a concussion, a fractured cheekbone and a broken eardrum…”
Sandford’s father, Paul, has been critical of the way former SDSU football coach Chuck Long handled the incident.
“The head coach of a Division I university did absolutely nothing about it, nothing,” the elder Sandford said. “I’m still angry about it.”
The Union-Tribune said Louis was not suspended for the football team’s final three games following the injury and the incident itself was not reported to police until [two weeks after it happened].
Chuck Long. Stephen Weber’s gift that keeps on giving.
Brava.
She’s a columnist for the San Diego State University newspaper.
After being fired from his coaching position in November 2008, Chuck Long is still on the San Diego State payroll. His salary: $715,900 per year until Dec. 31, 2010.
In a poorly planned decision, SDSU officials signed Long to a four-year contract in hopes that he would bring back our Aztec football pride. Now, after three losing seasons, a 9-27 overall record, and the lowest stadium attendance in seven years, officials are desperately trying to find a way out of paying Long.
Their solution: hiring Dan Kelley, former Labor Relations Manager for the City of San Diego, to act as a mediator between SDSU and Long in effort to work out a settlement. SDSU has signed yet another contract, this time with Kelley, agreeing to pay him $125 per hour until the dispute is resolved.
This would all be fine and dandy if I hadn’t just been dealt a painful fee hike through the Instructionally Related Activities (IRA) that goes to pay for the athletics program. This would also not be as big of a deal if we all had a multitude of classes to choose from, no crashing necessary. But with SDSU’s budget slashed in half, and the students seemingly the only ones suffering, I’m enraged with SDSU’s belligerent spending on sports and Long’s ridiculous expectation to be paid in full. Both parties have acted incredibly selfish[ly], and need to keep in mind it’s the students that have to pay the price.
Long should settle for a third of his contractual agreement, Kelley should be fired, and SDSU should be more logical when considering funding its consistently disappointing athletic program.
The IRA fee was imposed on us, increasing students’ tuition by $160 a year, supposedly to meet its Title IX requirements. Title IX mandates there be equal opportunity for male and female athletes, which means students have to pay to ensure that we have as many women’s teams as we do men’s.
Yet, most of the money is going to make up for the massive deficit accrued from a poorly performing football team. Only a small portion is actually going toward improving gender equity.
When I went to pay my fees for registration, I looked at the cashier in utter disbelief. My fees had doubled, costing me $500 more than last year, and with financial aid not being disbursed yet, I had to dig deep into my savings in order to pay the bill. While the fee itself is frustrating, the reasoning behind it is outrageous. We are paying for a football team that I have not gone to watch in more than three years.
But wait, there’s more than just massively increased fees. SDSU, along with the state of California, is experiencing such massive budget shortfalls, that the 2009-10 class schedule has been practically cut in half. As many students are currently realizing, there are much [many] fewer classes being offered this semester, and still more money is being spent on our football team.
Given the dour news of this upcoming semester, Long still expects SDSU to fulfill its contractual obligation of paying him more than $700,000 for this and next year. His greed is appalling, considering his termination was based on under-performance. Failing to transform our pitiable Aztecs into winners for three consecutive years merits termination, and if Long thinks he’s due his salary in full, he’s completely out of line.
What’s worse is that Long is unwilling to see how he directly affects the finances of the student body; his greed is now costing us the pricey fees of [a] mediator.
The students, staff and educational standards of the university can’t take any more unnecessary expenses. Long should understand this and be more empathetic to our situation. He should settle for $250,000 – the most SDSU could reasonably pay out – and find another coaching position elsewhere.
SDSU on the other hand, needs to completely rethink its athletic program. Is the university really willing to risk education over athletics?
Before another class is cut, or professor laid off, SDSU should consider canceling a sport. Whether it be tennis, volleyball, or preferably, football, President Stephen L. Weber would be wise to let go of an unneeded, unwatched and unsupported team.
Let Weber know your frustration. Whether it’s writing letters, e-mails or stopping by for a visit, make sure Weber understands the burden the athletic program is putting us through. Weber can be reached by email at presidents.office@sdsu.edu, by phone at 619-594 5201, or by appointment in Manchester Hall, room 3340.
As we the students suffer in the name of sports, we need to unify and pressure Weber to make better decisions.
You’d think, with California reviewing all of its budgets, it would fire Weber. In so doing, it might be able to save the university he’s very close to grinding into dust.
[A] controversial letter, written by [University of California San Diego] Sociology Professor Andrew Scull and endorsed by 22 other professors from various departments, said the state can not support a 10 campus system any longer. [The newspaper article doesn't say to whom they sent the letter, but let's assume it went to the head of their university. ]
“It’s simply not the case that all campus entities are of equal value to our goals,” reads the letter.
UCSC officials said Monday they would not publicly comment about the letter because it “did not deserve to be dignified,” in any way.
One part of the letter, which gives other solutions to the UC budget issues, reads, “we propose that you urge the President and the Regents to acknowledge that UCSC, UC [Riverside] and UC Merced are insubstantial measure teaching institutions… whose funding levels and budgets should be reorganized to match that reality.”
Insubstantial measure teaching institutions. That’s gotta hurt.
Let me see if I can find the whole letter somewhere…
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Okay, so here’s a good deal more, from a Merced newspaper:
First, the letter.
Oh: “In substantial measure, teaching institutions…” Okay. That’s not so bad. Must admit the way the bad article up there had it confused me.
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Monsieur Scull has assembled an impressive array of department chairs. That’s something else the original article doesn’t say; all of the signatures are from chairs, with a good mix of hard and soft sciences. UD figured weenies from philosophy and history and music wouldn’t be there; only cruel cold engineering types… But there they are (English, however, doesn’t show up).
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Ready, set, populist boilerplate!
These sun-soaked, fish taco-eating egotists want to protect themselves by picking on the weakest links. … Rich folks in the cities love to load their gullets, but they can be downright snobby toward people and places producing anything that can’t be uncorked, decanted and poured. … A selfish and bad idea, rife with snobbery, arrogance and condescension by some pontifical, pretentious profs.
That campus they’ve got down there in tony La Jolla, where some two-bedroom condos — I kid you not — list for $2 million? Shutter the university, sell everything off and start all over in Brawley.
The hubris in Scull’s tone, to say nothing of his conclusions, are outrageous. … How dare Scull and his signatories deem this campus “less than equal?”
SOS says: It’s all crap. It’s crap writing. Why?
Could’ve been written by a machine.
Last one – worst one – first. The work of a woman who’s a grad student at UCSD and teaching at Merced. It’s got it all — out of control emotions, the taking of righteous umbrage … how dare… outrageous… deem… Flounce your skirts back to the nineteenth century, little lady. No one’s listening.
The first excerpt is also a stuttering load of crap, a chaos of working class hero cliches featuring taco-decanting professors.
The middle one is the least problematic. It’s concise and kind of nice, with its strong detail about the cost of condos in La Jolla. But tony? I kid you not? The facts on the ground are all you need. Just go with the condo price and lose the can-you-believe-this shit.
… the genius behind the San Diego State University story, is never mentioned:
Who has the best job in football? Chuck Long, who is getting paid $715,000 a year to not coach San Diego State, or the consultant getting $125 an hour to figure out how to get rid of him?
Long was fired last year after three delightfully lousy seasons as the Aztec’s head football coach, but his contract entitles him to two more years of full salary and continued employment at the university. His job now? Holding campus “office hours” as he works on other “projects.” As long as Chuck shows up every day, he still gets paid.
His contract terminates if he ever finds another job—but who is going to pay Chuck Long $715,000 to do anything? There’s no way he’s giving up a gig this sweet. So in a Costanza-like turn of events, he finds himself in the enviable position of getting paid to do nothing by an employer that doesn’t want him around.
So what’s the school’s solution? Spend even more money, by hiring a former labor relations manager to try and negotiate some sort of settlement that Long will never have any reason to accept. It’s so crazy it just might work. I don’t think anyone has received so much money to do so little work since the Detroit Lions drafted some chump from Iowa to be their quarterback.
C’mon. You’ve been
reading this blog for
years, and you
know exactly who
to credit on this one,
as on so many
related SDSU
achievements…
That’s right! Le Roi
des Joquesniffers
himself, Steven Weber!
He’s the president of
SDSU, and just
like Jon Wefald,
he’ll do anything for a jock.
From CBS Sports:
… [College coaches and administrators tend to be] contemptuously dismissive … of everyone outside their industry as a general rule of behavior.
Or maybe you didn’t catch the Columbus Dispatch series on the systematic and deliberate misuse of the Buckley Amendment, which was designed to shield student report cards and transcripts but has now been extended by many schools to include gambling, accepted payoffs, cheating, cashing on an athlete’s notoriety, recruiting violations, academic fraud, rule-breaking boosters and even sexual abuse.
Or maybe you missed the news from so many schools where athletes promised scholarships have them taken away just because the coach recruited someone better.
Or Nick Saban getting a contract extension at Alabama that has no buyout clause, meaning that he can leave whenever he wants without any penalty whatsoever. Or San Diego State trying to figure out how to stiff the fired Chuck Long out of money they contractually owe him.
Ahh, the inspiration value of commitment … just makes you swell up with pride, doesn’t it?
This is all part and parcel of the wonderful world of college football, where emperors, dictators and, yes, even the Russian Presidium marvel at the powers granted to any even moderately successful program. The influence the industry wields without any mind to sensible oversight, or even any oversight at all, is breath-taking.
… [This is college] athletics’ essential stance to the outside world — one hand outstretched to hold the cash, one hand held aloft with the middle finger prominent. …
How else did this guy get to be president of San Diego State?
In December 2005, San Diego State brought in an outside consultant for $30,000 to help hire head football coach Chuck Long.
Now, more than three years later, SDSU has hired an outside consultant to help figure out how to part ways with him.
Dan Kelley, former labor relations manager for the city of San Diego, has been brought in to mediate a way out of an awkward contract situation for Long and SDSU.
… Long was fired as football coach last November but is being paid $715,900 per year until his contract runs out on Dec. 31, 2010. In the meantime, Long is being required to keep office hours on campus and do “projects” through the remainder of his contract.
Kelley, who now works as an independent consultant, referred questions about the situation to SDSU Associate Vice President Richel Thaler, who didn’t return messages about Kelley’s fee. Kelley recently also has been hired by Imperial County as a consultant in a contract worth as much as $25,000.
Jack Mills, Long’s agent, declined comment.
An ideal solution for both sides would include letting Long out of his contract while helping SDSU save money in times of dire financial straits.
Long received interest from other employers this past year to work as an assistant coach. But his SDSU contract stipulates that he is entitled to “no further compensation whatsoever from the date of that other employment.” This creates an incentive for Long to stay at SDSU instead of coaching elsewhere because no other likely job would pay him near as much.
Long’s replacement, Brady Hoke, is earning $675,000.
When Long was fired as coach, SDSU President Stephen Weber said no state money would be used for Long’s buyout. He said then about $1 million had been privately raised for it from donors. But since his firing, Long was owed more than $1.4 million for the remainder of his contract. It’s not clear how much of that $1 million in fundraising has been pledged but not yet received.
… Meanwhile, SDSU and other California State University schools are considering having employees take two unpaid furlough days off per month to address a $584 million budget deficit for 2009-10.
… that he almost loses it in this piece. But he’s a very good writer, so he manages to keep it together. Just.
There are some great turns of phrase here. SOS will point them out.
Stop the pimping. [Jump down to the last sentence. See how he returns to the pimping thing in the end? An old trick of the good writer -- Gives a nice rounded shapeliness to your article or essay.] Big-time college basketball and football are professional to the point of predation [Neat alliteration there.... professional to the point of predation...] as universities and the media make billions off “amateurs” who cannot get paid. [No, I don't like quotation marks, but these seem to me okay.] It is time to drop the hypocrisy and pay the players.
The latest reason has been provided by the University of Kentucky. It hired basketball coach John Calipari away from Memphis, paying him $31.65 million over eight years. His total compensation involves a web of millions of dollars in agreements the university has struck with shoe, athletic-apparel, and soda companies as well as marketeers of broadcast rights.
The athletic department says (as UConn Final Four basketball coach Jim Calhoun recently asserted in his famous tirade defending his $1.6 million salary) this is no problem because it is self-sustaining, sucking nothing away from educational resources. University of Kentucky President Lee Todd behaved less as a CEO of higher learning than as a stupefied gnome counting his treasure. [Ouch. Good writing there. Stupefied gnome.]
“If you have a coach who’s charismatic, who can really help the marketing image of the university, he will generate more money for us than the differential pay that we’ve had to go up to in order to get him,” Todd said.
So Calipari gets millions because universities bank on millions more from companies that make billions more still from unpaid amateurs who model gear on TV and ring up baskets on scoreboards that flash more ads and sponsorships than Times Square. Many of these amateurs are African Americans playing their way out of poverty, only to stay in relative poverty as they caddy the Caliparis into their country club memberships [Wow. Another nice line of words. Note again the alliteration: ... caddy the Caliparis into their country club... And is he playing on our most primitive populist sentiments? You bet your bippy. And is it working? Actually, yes. Know why? Because he's right. The pimps are disgusting in just the way he says they are.]
The student athletes do this for mere room and board, but football coaching salaries in the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast conferences average $2.2 million, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The highest-paid employee of any private college in the nation is University of Southern California football coach Pete Carroll at $4.4 million. Basketball coaches in the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, and Pacific 10 conferences average $1.2 million a year, according to USA Today.
In Kentucky’s case, Calipari gets $31.65 million, two new cars, and the country-club membership of his choice without having yet won an NCAA championship and leaving behind mediocre NCAA graduation rates at Memphis and UMass. Meanwhile, the University of Kentucky is reeling from $33 million in budget cuts over the past two years, last year eliminating 188 jobs and forcing a tuition increase of 9 percent. Proving how things rot from the head down, Todd last year took a $95,500 bonus. [As if we needed more reasons to vomit.]
But this is less about picking on Kentucky than cracking the illusion of the student-athlete. USA Today this week reported the 2009 NCAA basketball tournament generated $591 million in television and marketing revenues. Sales of college sports apparel are $4.3 billion a year. In the last two years, 37 schools sealed multimedia-rights deals worth $1.7 billion, including $110 million each for Ohio State and Nebraska and $80 million for UConn.
The University of New Mexico and San Diego State allow casinos as advertisers and sponsors. Kansas has a $27 million apparel agreement with Adidas. Maryland, just like any NBA team, sold $25 million of arena naming rights. On the same page as its coverage about this, USA Today had an ad for the ESPN college slam-dunk and three-point shooting contest, sponsored by State Farm, Denny’s, LifeLock, and Vegas.com. The ad featured eight athletes in their uniforms.
Yet the players cannot touch these billions swirling around them. Recruited for scholarships given to them less for study than to be a stud, if these players accept so much as a figurative candy bar from a booster or talk to a pro agent too soon, they are drummed off campus. [Sure, some of the language here is trite; but note the refreshing clarity Jackson brings to things: These aren't students. They're studs pimped by American university presidents like Mr Bonus.] Ask former UMass star Marcus Camby. And we know how so few of the biggest programs graduate so few athletes.
That is textbook exploitation. Sports gear sales and media deals would make the Fortune 500. It is sad enough how the recession further exposes the gulf between klieg-light sports and dim budgets for the classroom. But if we’re to remain addicted to college sports, at least pay the players. America is outraged Wall Street went wild, GM got lazy, and Bernie Madoff made off with billions. But when colleges teach Pimping 101 at the Final Four, what do you expect?
