During one lecture, a student asked a question I’ve heard many times: “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” My response was and is always the same: We didn’t evolve from monkeys. Humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. One ancestral population evolved in one direction toward modern-day monkeys, while another evolved toward humans. The explanation clicked for most students, but not all, so I tried another. I asked the students to consider this: Catholics are the oldest Christian denomination, so if Protestants evolved from Catholics, why are there still Catholics?

… for as long as I’ve been following it. But now that they’re on a losing streak, the crowds are pissed.

I mean, they’re always pissed. But now they’re also pissed.

University of Kentucky police will increase their presence at the next UK home football game as a result of fights among tailgaters outside Saturday’s game against Western Kentucky.

Police are getting wounded as they try to break things up.

More police will be patrolling at future games. So.

That will be expensive. Great use of money for a university.

And that will be hyper-surveillance. Always fun at a sports event. But if your fan base is made up of jerks …

Of course a lot of these people aren’t students. They aren’t even fans. Why watch a shitty team play? They’re there because violent drunks love a tailgate. Any tailgate.

Now how you gonna get around a nepotism policy and hire the coach’s daughter?

Let’s see. Well, make sure the coach is right there, of course, in the room with the trustees. So they can see her rich powerful daddy.

Then ask for a voice vote.

A divided University of Kentucky Board of Trustees on Tuesday narrowly approved hiring Kirby Willoughby, the daughter of UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart, as a graduate assistant in the athletics department.

The trustees voted by voice, and no individual votes were counted. When reporters polled trustees as they left the meeting, eight of the 19 who were present said they voted against the hire…

After the meeting, chairman Britt Brockman said he did not hear enough opposition to request a roll call vote.

… [The coach] was present for most of the meeting…

Everyone’s upset because Peevy – a UK athletics public relations guy – went and got all peeved with a UK student reporter who had the gall to interview a couple of basketball players without getting Peevy’s permission.

Yeah, just a couple of amateur college athletes, but there’s a big, big big old public relations machine right behind them, and you don’t, like, just, you know, call them… I mean, are you crazy?

When he found out that the reporter had committed journalism, Peevy punished him and his newspaper by withholding various other forms of access to the team.

The Associated Press Managing Editors group sent a letter to Kentucky’s Director of Athletics:

This is a level of abuse of free speech not tolerated at universities in other states and is particularly abhorrent at a taxpayer-owned institution…

Peevy does this sort of thing all the time – whenever anyone dares to do some independent reporting.

Because of course you need to control the news very closely when your franchise is filthy top to bottom (scroll down). You don’t want a free press reporting on what’s going on. Peevy is seeing to that.

Yes, UK’s now richly retired last president gassed on endlessly about how UK was on the verge of becoming a top-twenty university. How could it not soar into that empyrean? It spent most of its money on corrupt coaches and apathetic administrators. It embarrassed itself on a regular basis. It spat on the state’s most important living writer, Wendell Berry. Ain’t that how it’s done?

Actually, no. As this commenter – on an article about the newest faculty member on the university’s board of trustees – points out, Todd’s master plan trashed the school’s ranking and offered students an ever more amply paid, notoriously corrupt, sports program, coupled with angry, undercompensated faculty. Not really a recipe for a high US News and World Report outcome, though perhaps UK’s administration believes that the magazine uses sports wins in determining rankings.

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

The new trustee, Irina Voro, points out that the school treats faculty like “bumpkins.” Plus she “cited a Russian proverb: ‘A fish starts to be rotten at the top.'” Plus, she said that “a friend who is a former UK auditor couldn’t decipher the UK budget that is furnished to each UK trustee.”

Well, only a bumpkin wouldn’t realize that when you’ve got a sports program like UK’s, a lot of sleights of hand are called for.

Gray said that either Rupp Arena or a new downtown arena had to meet the needs of UK’s basketball program.

When asked how Rupp Arena was not currently meeting the needs of the program, Barnhart said, “In today’s world, we’ve got to make sure the fan amenities are what we think our fans deserve.” Those amenities include “electronics” and updated concession stands, he said.

Well, UK. University of Kentucky. What would this blog do without the University of Kentucky. Gotta spend their money on a brand new – or overhauled – stadium… It’s those needs… meeting the needs of the program…

For amenities (needed so that UK can charge more for tickets), and for mysterious ‘electronics,’ which probably means – yes! – the biggest, baddest Adzillatron money can buy! Our fans need loud, huge advertisements exploding in their faces every moment of every game, and, dammit, we’re going to find the money for it!

The short answer: Get a president who doesn’t preside.

From an interview with the latest one on his way out the door.

On UK’s scandalous athletics culture:

I wish the country as a whole wasn’t as crazy as it is about athletics. It’s out of whack. But it’s a reality that you have to deal with in this position.

On the Wildcat Coal debacle:

Todd and the Board of Trustees received a lot of criticism for accepting $8 million from coal operators to build a new dormitory for the basketball team in return for naming it Wildcat Coal Lodge. Author Wendell Berry pulled his papers from UK, and others complained that the university is too beholden to an industry that denies climate change and resists calls to become more environmentally responsible.

If he had it to do over, would Todd handle Wildcat Coal Lodge differently?

“I tried to handle it differently,” he said. “We had some other suggested names. You have donors who … want to name it what they want to name it. They are good donors for us across the whole university and they are capable of giving more. We discussed other names, but when it came down to it, it was a decision to take the donation.

“I would be glad to build a Wildcat Green Lodge,” he added, if donors would give UK the money to pay for it.

Common thread? You can’t expect me to do anything! I’m only the president.

Background here.

They will lose this round. UK’s destiny is way Adzillatron. But the faculty is fighting. If they’re in it for the long haul, they will eventually win.

… “Is this a misprint or what?” [Former University of Kentucky All-American Frank Ramsey] said when he saw that the K Fund donation required to reserve his second-row [Kentucky basketball] seats would leap from $1,350 to $5,000 per ticket.

… [He] decided not to renew his tickets near the floor.

… “I agree the university has the right to price their tickets,” he said. “I’m sure they’ve done a lot of research on it before raising the prices 300 percent.”

Actually, the increase in required K Fund donation for the first four rows represents a 370 percent markup.

… “(Paying) $10,000 just for the right to buy two tickets in Lexington, Ky., with this economy the way it is statewide — just seems they would have to have something to back it up…”

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Lexington Herald-Leader

… Is [UK basketball coach John] Calipari shady? No question. Everybody knows that the two college programs he coached prior to Kentucky — Massachusetts (1996) and Memphis (2008) — both had their Final Four appearances vacated by the NCAA. And, yes, there are already TMZ reports that NCAA investigators are snooping around Kentucky.

Who knows what the NCAA might find.

Agents paying players?

Players with bogus SAT scores?

A university administration that admits athletes who don’t have the academic credentials or desire to be in college?

Sounds about like every other big-time program to me.

The only difference is John Calipari understands that his program is nothing more than an NBA developmental league.

He is at least honest about the dishonesty that contaminates college athletics.

In the case of Todd’s university?  Not much.

… here. (Read the rest of my WKU posts here, if you can stomach it. Scroll down.)

Next, enjoy this beautiful observation from a faculty member at a university meeting last week.

Dick Taylor, an assistant professor in the school of journalism and broadcasting, asked [the president] if money spent on the football coach could be used towards education.

“In my three years, I’ve watched just the football coach … go from 250,000 a year to 450,000 a year to 850,000 dollars a year,” Taylor said. “I really wondered if the money could be better spent in what our core is which is educating students to get jobs.”

LOL.

Here’s the photo I want you to have in mind as you read the following summary of the Scott Eaton story at Northern Kentucky University. I want you to see how dressed for success the guy is, how he’s doing the Number One thing that Joe Paterno’s statue does (did), how next to him on a presentation board there’s the slogan BUILDING WINNERS FOR LIFE rather than, say, STEALING FROM YOUR SCHOOL AND FUCKING EVERY FEMALE IN SIGHT. I want you to think about how many American universities, as they sport up, fervently embrace and abundantly pay and abundantly esteem douchebags like Scott Eaton.

Smiling sweet-smelling Scott Eaton who came to pathetic NKU knowing he couldn’t do anything for it but that it could do plenty for him, and immediately began his sex and money extravaganza.

He did it for years, too, and that’s onaccounta no one cared, no one understood, some people were being cut in on the deal, some people were too scared to speak up about The Athletic Director, etc.

Dumb, pathetic, desperate schools like Northern Kentucky University are sitting ducks, and their desperate athletic programs are set up to attract people like Scott Eaton, who know losers for life when they see them.

… transition to Division I (details here) to notice who they’re hiring. As chair of a department.

One of her students has complained to a dean, but, you know… it’s just an anonymous student… Fuck him. And the staff members who keep resigning? Ditto…

But hey… WE’RE GONNA BE DIVISION I!!!

Dietel can take no pleasure in what has ensued over the last few years, though I’m sure he’s not surprised. He told the idiots at WKU what would happen. They didn’t listen. The school is now a money-hemorrhaging laughingstock.

Here’s our most recent information on WKU:

There will be a lot of empty seats at LP Field in Nashville tonight when the University of Kentucky and Western Kentucky open the 2011 football season at 9:15 p.m.

At 3 p.m. Wednesday, 40,262 tickets were available at Ticketmaster.com, including nearly 10,000 in the lower level. The stadium, where the NFL’s Tennessee Titans play their home games, holds 68,798 fans.

They’re desperately handing out free tickets so the stadium won’t look like a funeral home.