Excerpts.

[T]old us her father was Tuareg from N. Africa. My ex, who’d lived and traveled extensively through Africa began asking questions that we never got satisfactory answers for.

[Now] the story of a Puerto Rican grandfather began to come out.

As she started claiming more and more that she was Black I didn’t quite buy it but I honestly didn’t know what to do with it.

[S]he dyed her hair dark. Before it was a dusty blonde.

So many times she accused me of not being Black enough in terms of politics. She was hardcore and woker-than-thou with it.

I’d always talk to my ex about how her Black identity felt weird to me. Like I couldn’t get a grasp on her story. But I’d never come across someone who lied so extensively about her background. Lesson learned.

Rutgers University, Vision 2020: Be the Walmart of Universities.

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

OTOH: Does this sound like Walmart to you?

**********

UPDATE: Walmarts here we come! A reader reminds me to note that Rutgers has indeed convinced Schiano to take all of the school’s money.

From their greedy idjit prez to their AD — a man very highly compensated for having the brains to leave messages on journalists’ phones telling said journalists they are “fucking scum” for questioning him about the third case of psycho coaches at the school — Rutgers University has proved itself one of America’s premier high culture locations. The life of the mind is in good hands there.

He leaves, he tells us, on a high note; and who could disagree? From his refusal to step down from lucrative do-nothing corporate board seats even though they represented a conflict of interest; to his inept oversight, during his short tenure, of the most prolific, grotesque and high-profile athletic scandals American higher ed has ever seen; to his spending unprecedented amounts of school money on a football team so outrageously horrible that sports writers compete to describe it (“worst team in big ten history,” “so bad the big ten should kick them out,” “worst football imaginable,” “so bad it’s almost impossible“), Barchi has, allow UD to say, managed to embody to perfection the very essence of the postmodern American university president: Brainless, arrogant, greedy, institution-destroying, and deeply, deeply embarrassing for everyone involved. In other words: The bidding for Barchi to be president of your school has just begun!

For more of the financial and reputational benefits football has brought Rutgers, go here.

… you know more about the internal corruption of the place than I do.

*********

UD thanks dmf for the link.

*********

This blog’s Rutgers posts.

In the years of running this blog, UD has become familiar with the local booster angle in the local press. As various hideously and cynically mismanaged university sports programs get worse and worse, their provincial scribes visit the latest miracle AD who’s got a miraculous new formula to fix it all. The provincial scribes then report back on their amazing visit with this amazing person. Scathing Online Schoolmarm takes a look at an exemplary piece out of one of America’s most scandalous universities, Rutgers.

Here’s its first sentence.

When it comes to bleeding money, Rutgers University has long had one of the worst-performing athletic departments in the country.

The writer means the opposite of what she has written. She means that when it comes to bleeding money Rutgers has long had one of the best-performing athletic departments in the country. Greedy stupid addled Rutgers, with its constantly shifting, constantly scandalous, athletic staff (its last football coach “was fined $50,000 by the university and suspended for three games after contacting [an] instructor about [a player’s] grade. He was later fired [cost of his buyout to the kiddies at Rutgers: $1.4 million] after a losing season that was also marred by the arrest of seven players for violent crimes in and around New Brunswick.”), is possibly the best-performing American athletic department when it comes to bleeding money.

The writer proceeds to take down, unchallenged, every bullshit statement the new miracle guy gives her, inviting us to be excited about what her headline calls his “new plan.” Her big piece of news is that “after years of financial troubles, Rutgers athletics may be poised to get out of the red.”

So what’s the new genius plan?

Try to get supporters to give the program more money.

Sit on our asses until 2021, when Rutgers gets full membership in its conference.

Wow. Why didn’t the last forty ADs think of that.

Due to this amazing new formula, “we will,” promises the new AD, “be in the black.”

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

Buried deep in this article is the economist on the faculty who points out that even with the thrilling new payments just around the corner it’s quite likely that anyone telling you the department’s going to be in the black is a fool or a liar (“They haven’t gotten rid of [the deficit] because they don’t want to and don’t need to.”)

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

And speaking of getting rid of: When, in a year or so, they get rid of this latest miracle worker under pressure from students and alumni and faculty appalled at his real plan (dismantling most components of the university for the sake of the football team), the next Amazing Kreskin will assure this same reporter that victory is just around the corner. And she will faithfully transcribe what he says.

Run by mad substitute football coach Norries Wilson [“Wilson … proceeded to go around the [press conference] room calling on individual reporters one at a time like a school teacher. The first person he called on worked for Penn State athletics and was simply at the press conference to record quotes, so he didn’t have a question. Later, [Norries] called on a photographer who was only filming, so she also didn’t have a question…. [A] reporter referred to the Rutgers head coach as ‘Flood.’ Wilson interrupted the question and demanded the reporter call him ‘Coach Flood.'”], Rutgers University now does little more than express for the nation the institution-wide surreality of big-time university sports (“The New Brunswick jail can probably field a terrific football team.”), exactly the way Donald Trump expresses for us the surreality of presidential campaigns.

Rutgers’ putative president wants nothing to do with an athletics program that has anyway, like so many such programs, almost fully spun off from whatever leftovers in New Brunswick people are calling a “university” (see details on the total divorce between universities and their big sports programs here), and the fall of the Rutgers second-in-command (really first, but let’s go with the fiction that presidents run sports factories) COACH Flood, leaves us with the Alexander Haig-like (“I’m in control here.”) figure of third-in-command Norries. All sportsdom this morning talks of his wacko press conference, and there’s no one left at Rutgers to send in the vaudeville hook.

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

One difference between Trump and Rutgers: Trump is really rich…

Oh but Rutgers is well on its way, given all those big-time football bucks…

The program is a financial disgrace. Since 2003-04, it has racked up $287 million in deficits. The university’s financial plan for sports calls for $183 million in additional deficits through 2022 — despite new revenue from the Big Ten Conference.

These deficits have been funded with subsidies from student fees (students have no say about that, of course) and university general funds.

As for the players, as one explains, “We’re really a tight team. You’re going to defend your brothers. I’m going to do anything for those guys I’m out there playing with.” Which sounds wonderful until you see it play out in a bar when one of them gets in a fight and the others rush in to play defense. Or when some on-campus criminal mastermind organizes them into an armed home invasion team. They’re a violent lot, the Rutgers football guys, and very group-oriented. There’s no I in RUTGERS FOOTBALL.

Coach Flood will do anything for the guys. He even sets up little teas with faculty members to swap ideas on how best to educate them.

[One] get-together lasted about 50 minutes … and resulted in [a] part-time prof agreeing to assign [one player] extra work that could improve his grade because she felt “implicitly intimidated” and “uncomfortable,” given Flood’s status.

Flood gets along just as well with full-time faculty.

[A faculty rep] believes Flood’s decision to lean on a part-time professor who earns around $4,800 per class and enjoys little job protection wasn’t an accident. “A tenured professor like me would have told him go to hell.”

Yes, go to hell highest paid public employee in New Jersey! (And don’t forget those bonuses for, uh, successful get-togethers with professors!) Go to hell most powerful man on campus who with one word can rouse hordes of fans to ruin my life! Tenured Rutgers Faculty to Flood: Go To Hell!

Ah but they’re weary now, weary… (Headline: RUTGERS COMMUNITY WEARY…)

They need to bring back Ray Rice, pride of Rutgers, to slap a little sense into them…

… dumpster fire.

Dumpster Fire

Football’s a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring.
Bound by wild desire
We fell into a dumpster fire.

We fell into a burning dumpster fire,
We went down, down, down as the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns,
The dumpster fire, the dumpster fire.

… a concrete initiative.

A voice in a comment thread grapples with the latest mega-scandal at Rutgers University. (The football team boasts both an armed invasion gang and a coach who allegedly puts pressure on professors to pass players who have flunked courses.) The commenter attempts to argue that a thing which drains millions of dollars from a university’s budget has really nothing to do with the university. Hm.

Run away! Run away!

If you actually show up for the emergency meeting about your criminalized football team and the man who recruited it, it’s liable to be embarrassing. Reporters will almost certainly ask you for a comment, the way they did ol’ Martin up there. And what can you say?

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

UD found a great comment – she recommends board members use it, or something like it – in this comment thread:

This is dumb, can we move on, this has zero impact on the academic integrity of the average student at Rutgers, stop blowing it up because of 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 players.

What’s great about this comment is that its player list can be easily expanded as more are arrested. In fact the current number is six, not five, so depending on when the board member uses it she can add numbers to reflect the latest total…. Stop blowing it up because of 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or even ten players.

Like Yeshiva University’s Richard Joel, Robert Barchi of mega-scandal school Rutgers is essentially a rich guy who wants to be left alone to attend corporate board meetings with people like himself. He doesn’t wanna know from his school’s massively catastrophic overspending on athletics, and he certainly doesn’t wanna threaten his classiness (doctor, university president, corporate seat holder) by grubbing around with lowlifes like sadist coach Mike Rice and recruiter-of-criminals coach Kyle Flood. (The governor of the state has expressed a close variant of this approach: “I certainly have a lot more important things than worry about what wide receiver is suspend[ed] for a few games recently. Being governor of New Jersey and running for president is a little more important than that.”)

So as per usual, as the fact of his football coach having recruited a bevy of armed home invaders becomes national news, Barchi’s remaining above the fray.

In this he represents – as you know if you read this blog – one of the, er, dominant typologies among jock school presidents.

Some JSP‘s are totally happily down and dirty with their having to devote their entire tenure to football and basketball scandals (these include not only … problematic players and coaches, but also regular gigantic buyout payments and litigation costs when coaches are fired or leave or whatever, plus other pesky matters like the new stadium that fucked the institution’s budget but good and sits empty because no one attends games, post-game student riots, drunk and disorderly tailgates, that teensy academic scandal over in communication studies, etc., etc.). But some JSP‘s, like Barchi, come to the job with a sense of themselves incompatible with, say, spending days desperately lobbying the state legislature for alcohol sales in the stadium. They just don’t see themselves as liquor shills, and you’re not going to get them to do this sort of thing, however much money the empty stadium is hemorrhaging. He’s a high-ranking academic officer, dammit, and there are certain duties he will not perform.

But if, on your presidential daily rounds, you refuse to visit your school’s field of dreams, its denizens are going to feel offended. Like this guy. He’s really pissed with the president, and he’ll tell you why.

First, though, he wants to share a photograph with you. Granddad Flood cradles an awed baby in his arms right after a win on the field!

Okay, now that we’re in the Coacha Inconsolata mood, let’s roll.

The writer begins by quoting another local scribe shocked at Barchi’s refusal to help Coach Flood out of this latest mess:

Ask President Robert Barchi to step in and help? He can’t even pretend he likes the big-time athletics part of his job…

How can he not like the big-time athletics part of his job? What’s not to like?

And now the writer, noting the fact of Barchi having left Flood to twist slowly slowly in the wind, expresses his incredulity:

The president of the university – the president of a school embroiled in all sorts of negative publicity, with a coach who is the most visible face of said university – hasn’t spoken with the coach about the latest issue? Really?

Football’s the front porch, which means coach is the front face, and if you’d just rather not deal with that, if you prefer a sense of yourself as resident in a cloister rather than a flophouse with a wraparound porch, you’re going to avoid the coach.

Now the writer quotes another outraged Rutgers fan.

[T]o leave Coach Flood facing the media alone for the crimes by students and student athletes announced this week just isn’t right… Rutgers is the size of a small city and will have its bad elements who should be disciplined and prosecuted as appropriate.

The pertinent crime committed was the recruitment of criminals. That crime was committed by Flood alone – he being the ultimate decision-maker (you don’t actually think there are admissions committees that look at these guys, do you?). As for the bad elements, when these turn out to be not just players but coaches like (base salary close to $700,000) Mike Rice, you’re not just talking elements. You’re talking about entire enchiladas (which is why no one’s surprised that Flood also turns out to be fucking with the academic staff).

Okay, so get out your hankies – time for the Coacha Inconsolata final appeal:

Flood has been standing alone. Facing the media….alone. And representing himself, his team, his university – and mine – with dignity and forthrightness. Alone. And that is shameful and wrong.

BWAH!

… courtesy of the players – or their teammates – themselves.

But don’t get too excited. It’s rather speculative at this point.

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

If you’re interested in comparing this particular move from school to school, here’s last year’s best-known play:

Five football players from California University of Pennsylvania, who reportedly chanted “Football strong” as they left after brutally beating a 30-year-old man outside a popular off-campus restaurant, were arrested Thursday.

Numbers are a little shaky – UD seems to recall the U Cal number rose to eight suspended players, whereas so far the Rutgers team seems to have had five members – and of course it’s not fair to compare when one team has a numerical advantage.

But let’s say both teams had five members. The U Cal team did practically kill a guy, whereas it looks as though Rutgers was only able to break a guy’s jaw. Nor do I think Rutgers did a team shout-out of Football Strong or something like Football Strong.

But then again I don’t think the U Cal group filmed their play, while maybe we should give points to Rutgers if their guys did that.