How long can people remain in a state of surprise? Ever since – at enormous student and taxpayer expense – the University of Minnesota’s new football stadium opened in 2009, every dumbass prediction about its success has been ground into dust. Read UD‘s posts about it. (Scroll down.)

As desperation sets in (there are loans to pay off!) bribery and coercion have begun.

Minnesota offered student packages for men’s hockey and men’s basketball tickets — but only if students also bought slower-selling football tickets. But after students and Gov. Mark Dayton earlier this month complained — the governor said he was “appalled” by the practice — the school adjusted its policy. Forty-two students were given a refund, the school said.

Why wasn’t the governor (he wasn’t governor then, but he was a citizen) appalled when the state went ahead and let the University of Minnesota take all that money and build a failed stadium – one that can’t even get the university’s students to attend games in any significant number? There were already, back then, dark omens that the university had tightened admissions standards to the point where a shocking number of admits didn’t give a shit about football. Why didn’t anyone heed the omens and roll back, say, literacy requirements?

Handing the name of your university’s sports venues over to the local biotech, banking, or fried chicken establishment in exchange for money – making your university one humongous advertising vector – is, well, pathetic, but so what. There’s only so much whining we’re going to do here about the corporatization of the university. And after all this is a capitalist culture, and the university reflects that culture, blah blah.

To be sure, things get a little dicier when you’re stuck with the Kenneth Lay Chair in Economics, or even the Lloyd Blankfein Professor of History.

The University of Miami had the Nevin Shapiro Student Athlete Lounge, etc. Many universities have dealt (some of them, like Seton Hall, repeatedly) with the embarrassment of questionable names on rooms, buildings and arenas, on academic chairs, on programs, on honorary degrees, on whatever.

But it’s one thing to deal with the consequences of honoring over-zealous capitalists; it’s another to honor authoritarian regimes whose fundamental political identity is outrageously at odds with the values of American universities.

A National Review writer notes that Harvard has a Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations:

The Sultan of Oman shackles his nation’s media with one of the most restrictive press laws in the Arab world, and Freedom House rates the sultanate, on a scale of 1 (freest) to 7 (least free), a 5.5, making it “unfree.”

Then there’s the Saudis:

In 2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz gave $20 million to both Harvard University and Georgetown University to establish centers for Islamic studies. At Georgetown, the prince’s gift funds the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the university’s vaunted School of Foreign Service. Saudi Arabia may be an American ally in the Middle East, but it is also one of the most repressive nations in the world. Leaving aside Saudi Arabia’s gross violations of the rights of all its citizens, the royal family doesn’t appear to have any more than an academic interest in “Muslim-Christian understanding”: The kingdom lacks even one Christian church.

The atrium of American University’s School of International Studies is named after the crown prince of Bahrain, another scandalously repressive country.

So I guess the point the NRO guy is making is that it’s hypocritical at best and a betrayal of fundamental values at worst when a university takes immense cash from authoritarian regimes and in exchange glorifies the names of those regimes. (Some British universities were, most recently, willing to do this with Gaddafi’s Libya.) The basic deal involves the university using its clean reputation to help cleanse not very sweet-smelling political units. And of course the deal can evolve into the university gradually incorporating nice thoughts about these units into their curricula; or let’s say overlooking some less than pleasant aspects of those regimes (Women in Saudi Arabia? You say there are women in Saudi Arabia? I didn’t see any when I was there…).

Oh, plus there are lots of regular, non-student, empty seats.

Yes, TCF Stadium, when the University of Minnesota made its case to hit up state taxpayers and students for it, was going to be such a big deal, such a big success…

Since the 50,800-seat stadium opened in 2009, the number of student season-ticket holders has dropped from 10,248 to 4,953 last year.

Oh and we’ve been treated, since the opening of this pathetic hole, to the entire panoply of excuses – no alcohol (they fixed that), the team loses sometimes, heavy traffic, it’s really a commuter school (but TCF Stadium was going to strengthen the campus community!), bad WiFi, competition from tv…

Hey. Did anybody mention all of that while people were discussing whether they wanted to spend everyone’s money on a huge new stadium?

Did anybody talk to any students?

… [W]hen I arrived at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2005, I didn’t identify myself as a Gopher. I came to study and get my degree, not to frolic in the flamboyance of our college sports teams and most certainly not to fund a $288.5 million TCF Bank Stadium. Yet this was an identity that was forced upon me. It was built into my tuition. It was assumed, because I lived within the University community, that of course I was a Gophers football fan and that I would have no qualms about chipping in for the sake of sport. It is a ridiculous and insulting assumption … We should be fighting for the separation of university life from collegiate sports. … Yes, TCF Bank Stadium has already been built, but we still have time to rethink the future of university sports. The recession affords us the opportunity to look critically at the institutions we have designed, modify them and maybe even start over…

OTOH, that separation she’s talking about is definitely happening. Professional coach, professional players, professional stadium, almost exclusively non-students in the stands… It’s happening!

In one of many similar pathetic appeals across the nation, Minnesota’s Star Tribune editorial board begs its readers to go to its state university’s football games. The prospect of what looks to be 13,000 empty seats at UM’s opening game (“cold weather will not be a legitimate excuse for staying away”) seems to have generated panic and depression at the newspaper, which no doubt realizes that widespread and growing indifference to the game will have a serious impact on its circulation and ad revenue and all.

But look how they make the case, petites.

The university has made a large investment in coaching salaries and facilities. Gophers fans can be part of the solution by buying tickets, getting the maroon and gold out of the closet and coming back to campus on game days.

Parsing the logic here is a challenge. I guess the crux of the thing lies in the word “solution.” Uh… because UM, over intense local opposition, insisted on building a stadium it can’t afford, and because it hires incredibly expensive jerks throughout its athletics programs, the citizens of the state must bail it out of all the financial and legal and reputational problems it has predictably brought on itself.

UM, in other words, has done its part in steadily bankrupting itself, demanding more and more sports money from its students, and making the school a laughingstock when its AD turns out to be a drunken idiot who reels around town “asking if he [can] perform oral sex” on random women; now the good people of Minnesota must do their part by spending huge money to attend games in which they have no interest.

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The Wall Street Journal just published a piece – COLLEGE FOOTBALL’S GROWING PROBLEM: EMPTY SEATS – which features in its first paragraphs (the only ones you can read without subscribing) the self-same University of Minnesota. It explains why the local editorialists pleaded with their readers not merely to buy tickets but to actually show up in the stadium on game day. WSJ:

When Minnesota hosted Nebraska at TCF Bank Stadium last year, the game featured charismatic new Golden Gophers coach P.J. Fleck, a home team fighting for a bowl berth and a big-name opponent. The announced attendance was 39,933—an OK crowd for a crisp November day in Minneapolis — but it didn’t tell the whole story.

Only 25,493 ticketed fans were counted at the gates, 36% lower than the announced attendance and about half of the stadium’s capacity. More than 14,000 people who bought tickets or got them for free didn’t show up.

… news that UM’s football team is boycotting the rest of its season (the little that’s left) unless ten suspended players are unsuspended, and unless it gets an apology from the school’s president for having suspended the players in the first place, ol’ UD‘s been pondering this one.

This is a new one on her. A university football team, en masse, refuses to play or practice, goes on strike, puts a jock school’s big-money super-ticket on ice. All at once a hundred and twenty glutes hamstrings and quadriceps enter the inactive list.

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The announcement made for a spectacular visual. With trembling hands a wide receiver read from a sheet of paper, while behind him loomed suited-up troops.

The next day the university’s president issued a vaguely conciliatory statement, and today (Saturday) he has issued another, less conciliatory, statement. Here’s what he’s trying to convey to the lads.

Even though the courts decided there was insufficient evidence to go after a bunch of players who seem to have been involved in a gang sexual assault against a student, the university can do its own punitive thing. The team’s thing is that the guys are unjustly condemned since the courts turned down the case; the school’s thing is fuck that this place has had a shitload of sex problems from players as well as coaches in the last couple of years and we can’t afford to look as though we’re doing nothing.

I mean the school doesn’t say that; it doesn’t say that a random half-attentive blogger like UD can scroll through her University of Minnesota posts and be astounded by the number of sex scandals its sports teams have generated lately, but c’est entendu. It’s like Baylor or Penn State – do you really think this nation’s galloping-fucktard campuses are going to let the next run of rapes slide? We’ve got a critical mass problem here. We’ve got a money problem here. You know how much clean-up costs? The latest estimate for rapeabilly rapscallion Baylor is $223 million. (UD thanks JND for the link.)

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So. A few more comments on this story if I may.

The team’s gotta be counting on a groundswell of support from students, alumni, the local community. They might not want to hold their breath. Fuck Fatigue has set in, UD suspects, as well as General Gross-out. Whatever else you want to say about the incredibly detailed university report on the events of that night, it for sure makes for nauseating reading. It even features a high school student, a person the team’s trying to recruit. One of his possibly future teammates is quoted saying “it was good the recruit was having sex because that might make him more likely to come to the university.”

Shades of the University of Louisville, our first official house-of-prostitution university.

Another reason we probably shouldn’t expect much support: There isn’t even that much interest in the game. After having built an insanely expensive new stadium because that would bring in huge numbers of fans, UM has watched the stadium steadily empty of spectators even as UM has got a huge debt to pay back on the place.

Datz right – tanking football game attendance is a national trend. But add to that the peculiarly off-putting business of rooting for a sorta scummy team and you’re talking rows of dead bleachers.

So the team isn’t playing and the students aren’t watching – a quintessentially postmodern moment here, no? Simulacrum City. Animatronic fans and billion-dollar gifts from trustee venture capitalists are going to have to keep the show going.

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UPDATE: That was quick. Boycott over.

UD‘s gotta figure that the guys had a chance to read the university’s report on the incident. I ain’t kidding when I say it’s stomach-churning. Maybe you don’t want to put yourself on the line for the people featured in the report.

UD admires the team’s solidarity in defense of their teammates. But anyone making their way through the eighty sickening pages describing what these guys actually seem to have done will conclude they’re not worth fighting for.

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It’s all over but the satires.

Your father keeps a brothel. Your best buddy lost his job because he drinks too much and tells random women to let him go down on them. The terrible team you coach keeps losing players due to sex crimes. If you’re Minnesota’s Richard Pitino, you’re going to want desperately to get the hell off campus – pronto – at the drop of a hat. And that’s what your fleet of private planes, paid for by the good people of that state, is for. (They also recently paid for the football stadium. They are very very good.) That’s why you’re always flying away.

Gophers men’s basketball coach Richard Pitino has spent twice as much on private jet travel as his contract allows since arriving at Minnesota — doubling his budget in his first season, and tripling it his second season… Pitino spent $116,041 on private jet usage in fiscal year 2014 (spanning June 2013 to June 2014) and $156,440 for fiscal 2015. … [As] of February, Pitino had already spent $53,388 on private jet usage for fiscal year 2016. During [a] three-year period, Pitino also took two private jet flights that were “unallowable” because they were less than 200 miles from campus.

Less than 200 miles? Whatever. Gotta get it up.

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Best headline so far:

Report: Richard Pitino Overspent Private Jet Allowance With Permission Of Sexually Harassing Ex-AD

Big-time university sports: You stay classy.

#1:

… [W]hen I arrived at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2005, I didn’t identify myself as a Gopher. I came to study and get my degree, not to frolic in the flamboyance of our college sports teams and most certainly not to fund a $288.5 million TCF Bank Stadium. Yet this was an identity that was forced upon me. It was built into my tuition. It was assumed, because I lived within the University community, that of course I was a Gophers football fan and that I would have no qualms about chipping in for the sake of sport. It is a ridiculous and insulting assumption … We should be fighting for the separation of university life from collegiate sports. … Yes, TCF Bank Stadium has already been built, but we still have time to rethink the future of university sports. The recession affords us the opportunity to look critically at the institutions we have designed, modify them and maybe even start over…

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#2

Look up Ashley Nord, the latest Rhodes Scholar from the University, one of only 32 such individuals selected from the United States and a former Gophers track athlete.

While you are at it, you could talk to Hassan Mead, a five-time All-American in only four seasons of competition. He has a fascinating story of coming to America knowing no English and is now thriving as an athlete and a student. Talk to the director of student-athlete welfare to see the multitude of community service programs Gophers athletes engage in.

The unavoidable truth — perhaps an inconvenient one for many writers — is that the majority of University student-athletes pursue their athletics with passion while simultaneously outperforming their non-athlete peers in the classroom. Please, writers, the next time you write about the University imposing crushing financial burdens to pay for the stadium, remember to give credit where credit is due.

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From a comment on #2:

Did you mean for this letter to be published on the same day as articles about basketball player and football player thuggery?

Hassan Mead is absolutely a great runner. How does that contribute to the academic success of this university? … This is a research university, and I’ve seen 15 articles about Eric Decker but can’t remember the last article about research. I know they have some, but it’s obviously not a priority of the administration or the MN Daily.

Athletics do nothing but take away from this university, financially and otherwise.

… to pathetic whining in the face of failure. The voice of the university athletics director.

The University of Minnesota is still hawking some of the priciest seats in its new, $300 million TCF Bank Stadium, long after it hoped to have sold out the first season.

… “If the economy was better and we had alcohol, I have no doubt we would have it all sold out,” said David Crum, an associate athletics director overseeing ticket sales for the stadium.

Oh, if, if, if, IF! Fiddle-dee-dee!

UD will let the citizens of Minnesota do the talking on the subject of their big beautiful new university football stadium and its money problems.

They express themselves on the comment thread of a recent Pioneer Press article. That’s one of the citizens up there, in my headline.

First you need to know the latest on the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, the cost-overrun, unnecessary stadium that was going to bring in all sorts of revenue for the university.

For those who don’t click to the article, the deal is that because they can’t serve booze, the university’s not selling its luxury boxes.

You will need a few drinks after a couple seasons of watching the Gophers play football. Heck who am I kidding? You need to be smashed right now just to stand em.

[The team it’s all for, the Gophers, suck.]

Does it hurt not to drink for a couple of hours? Poor little football jocks can’t have a beer whaaaa whaaaa whaaaa.

[This guy doesn’t understand that the luxury boxes are bought by corporations plying potential clients with alcohol. No ply, no play.]

So … seats aren’t selling, the place is hemorrhaging taxpayer money and bleeding whatever educational mission might be left at the university.

It’s not so much that drunks must have their football. If it’s going to pay for itself, football must have its drunks.

Excerpts from a Minnesota Public Radio conversation about this:

Murray Sperber: The breathalyzer’s a good idea…. [The stadium will have mandatory breathalyzer tests at the gate for students who have been drunk at games before… What? Why the tests and security cameras everywhere etc. etc. if the stadium will be alcohol free? Are you really asking that question??? LOL.] I’ve been appalled by the behavior of young drunk male students… It’s dangerous… I’ve never understood why universities don’t control tailgating… It’s on their land… Part of the reason is they don’t want to piss off alumni… Many of these people tailgating and drinking are not in fact alumni; they’re local fans of the team… The schools can’t unburden themselves from bigtime university sports and the various myths that say they’re helping the university.

Toben Nelson: Division I football games are drinking events… Alumni are a major barrier to making any serious changes to alcohol policy on campus…