There are things about Bob Huggins that are not open to debate:


-His college basketball teams win games. In his 16 seasons at the University of Cincinnati, the Bearcats were 399-127, won 10 regular-season conference championships, appeared in the postseason every year and reached the Final Four in 1992.

-The man is one heck of a defensive coach. No one enjoys playing against a team coached by Huggins. His 2000 Cincinnati team blocked 223 shots and his'98 squad held Conference USA opponents to barely 59 points per game.

-The fans at Kansas State, where he is beginning his first season, already are in love with the guy. K-State set a season-ticket sales record this year, has sold all 25 new courtside seats, priced at $4,400 each for the season, and plans to construct 14 or 15 luxury suites at the top of Bramlage Coliseum before next season.

The Wildcats' arena is being referred to as "Huggieville."

"We've had an unbelieveable response," said athletic department spokesman Tom Gilbert.




There is one more piece of Huggins' complex job resume that is not debatable: Trouble and controversy have been part of the package.

Huggins, whose K-State team visits Cal on Wednesday night, was fired by Cincinnati in August 2005, given a $3 million buyout and asked to leave the premises by university president Nancy Zimpher.

Her explanation for the largely unpopular decision: "character counts."

Huggins' response skirts the issue a bit. "When they do pretty much an impromptu roast and 7,000 people show up and you have ongoing, continuous support," he said, "would you think there are character issues there?

"Those people who are casting stones, I doubt very seriously they would be greeted by that reaction when they leave. What does that say about my character?"

Perhaps not as much as it says about the priorities of fans who want to hitch their wagon to a winner, and may be willing to dismiss the rest.


Player troubles


In Huggins' case, his body of work suggests a fairly forgiving bunch.

Juxtaposed against all the success his teams had on the court is an exhausting litany of off-court issues. Four times in nine years the NCAA reported his team had a graduation rate of zero percent. According to university figures, 21 of his players at Cincinnati had "significant encounters with law enforcement," including arrests for domestic violence, rape and DUI.

Huggins, 53, had his own DUI arrest and conviction in 2004, which he has acknowledged probably led to his ouster.

Kansas State, which has not appeared in the NCAA tournament the past 10 years, hired Huggins after checking with NCAA enforcement officials and getting a recommendation from Bob Knight. Cincinnati was cited for "lack of institutional control" after an NCAA investigation of the basketball program in 1998, but NCAA officials told K-State athletic director Tim Weiser that the coach never was found to have committed a major violation.

"They did their homework," Huggins said. "They knew some people's perception is certainly not reality."

Weiser, in an interview with the Kansas City Star, said he expects Huggins to perform well in all areas. "A lot of our supporters think it has to be one or the other — win or do things right," he said. "But I don't see why it has to be that way. We can do both. We will do both."

Just in a case, there is a clause in Huggins' contract guaranteeing him at least $800,000 per year, unless his actions cause "material injury to the reputation of the school."

That was at the crux of Zimpher's decision to cut him loose from Cincinnati. Asked if Zimpher's charges related to character had merit, Huggins said his personality didn't need reshaping.

"I would think those around me would say I'm probably the same guy," he said. "We all get older. We all, hopefully, get a little smarter."

Likewise, Huggins defended his former players, noting, "I recruited wonderful guys."

That would include former center Art Long, who was arrested in 1995 for punching a police horse four times after a traffic stop.

"In the Cincinnati media, and hence the national media, the word 'acquittal' doesn't mean anything," Huggins said. "Nobody wants to talk about how many guys actually were convicted."

Long was acquitted after his attorney successfully argued Long and teammate Danny Fortson were petting the horse, not punching it.

But another former Cincinnati player, Donald Little, was charged — and convicted — in 2003 of assault charges against roommate Justin Hodge, whom he believed had stolen money from him. Little was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years probation after taping Hodge to a lawn chair, punching him hard enough to knock out a permanent bridge and stabbing him with a hot wire coat hanger.

Should the coach take the blame for incidents such as these? Is he responsible for the student-athletes he brings onto a campus?

"Of course, we have responsibility," Huggins said. "I don't know that we have 24-hour responsibility. That's awful hard. The reality is I was there for 16 years. If I had been like most guys and moved every five years, none of that stuff would ever be brought up."

Even after he left Cincinnati — while sitting out the 2005-06 season and after being hired by K-State — Huggins continued to court Tyree Evans, a guard from Richmond, Va. Evans was indicted in September 2005 on charges of rape of a child and indecent assault and battery on a child.

In July, athletic director Weiser announced the university would no longer recruit Evans.

Weiser has said he expects Huggins to pursue players who will represent themselves well in the classroom and community, not just on the basketball court. Kansas State president Jon Wefald told the Manhattan Capital-Journal he wants the program to achieve a 55-percent graduation rate. Using the NCAA's formula, where players have six years to complete their degree, just 28 percent of Huggins' Cincinnati players graduated.


On honor roll


To Huggins' credit, his players' academic performance at Cincinnati did improve some in his final years. In 2001-02, the team's collective grade-point average of 2.57 was best among basketball teams in Conference USA. A year later, six Bearcat players were named to the C-USA Commissioner's Honor Roll.

On the other hand, according to University of Cincinnati officials, one player on the Bearcats' roster had a 0.0 GPA at the time Huggins was forced out.

Bottom line: Coaching basketball is Huggins' primary assignment — that's why Kansas State hired him. Already he has begun to build his program.

Forward Bill Walker, a top-10 recruit from Cincinnati who had exhausted his high school eligibility, signed with the school in early November, and becomes eligible to join the team on Dec. 16.

Then, two weeks ago, Huggins signed a four-man recruiting class ranked by at least one scouting expert as the nation's best. The headliner is Michael Beasley, a 6-8 forward who is considered among the top five high school players in the country and the most celebrated recruit in school history.

Huggins expects the Wildcats to be competitive this season, but it's just a beginning.

"I don't know anything other than how to win," he said. "When you get good enough that you're (in the chase) to win the Big 12, certainly you're good enough to compete nationally.

"That's what we want to do."

No more college football coaches sacked since sundown, but the day is young. We can use this temporary ceasefire to count the bodies being carried away, in a landscape where patience is spent even quicker than money. [We know that sportswriters as a group are metaphor-mad, with the metaphors changing from paragraph to paragraph, and Mike is no different. The scene of battlefield carnage with which he's begun, where multiple million dollar a year coaches with massive buyouts are compared to dead soldiers, will shift in the next paragraph.]

There goes Alabama's Mike Shula. He went 10-2 in 2005, nursing a sick program back from NCAA probation. That spared him the pain about as long as two Tylenol. The Tide went 6-6 this season. Goodbye. [Coach Schweitzer cures the team of probation only to be struck down himself.]

There's Miami's Larry Coker. His record is 59-15 with a national championship. And while it was easy to dump on his program after the brawl with Florida International, here's a tidbit that rarely gets included in the portrayal of the Hurricanes as Animal House: He graduated 100% of his class last year and played eight graduate students this season, with nine more to get their degrees next month. A lot of good that did him when Miami lost to Virginia. [No one besides Lopresti has portrayed the Hurricanes as Animal House, because everyone knows the Hurricanes are far worse than Animal House. There's a credibility problem here, deepened by Lopresti's faux-naivete about the nature of the degrees the players have earned.]

There's Arizona State's Dirk Koetter. This will be the third straight year the Sun Devils are in a bowl and he is 4-2 against state rival Arizona. The last guy to coach Arizona State to three straight bowls was John Cooper, and Ohio State came knocking at the door. This time, Koetter was shown the door.

There's Darrell Dickey of North Texas. His team won four straight Sun Belt titles from 2001-2004. Then the Mean Green turned meek. Gone.

There's Chris Scelfo. He might have had the toughest coaching job in college football in 2005, trying to regroup a Tulane team made homeless by Hurricane Katrina, playing 11 games in 11 cities. The administration was very understanding when the Green Wave went 2-9. This season, Tulane went 4-8. No more sympathy. [Good move rhetorically to leave the homeless group for last. You want the biggest sob story at the end of the list, for maximum impact.]



The heads are rolling so frequently, this is starting to look like a bowling alley. [At least he's shifted from metaphor to simile. But the simile's a lame one -- heads rolling is a cliche; and drawing your metaphor from another sport has a muddying effect.] The regular season is not completed, and already 10 coaches — more than eight percent of the head-coaching workforce in Division I-A — have been fired. And the motives are nearly always the same.

The administration and the boosters want to be like Ohio State and USC. They want big bowls, big exposure, big dollars. Lusting for something many of them will never have.

"He has put us on a wonderful stage and has done some wonderful work," the Arizona State athletic director said of Koetter as she canned him. "But we're looking for a higher platform."

"He personally has displayed impeccable character," the Alabama athletic director said of Shula. But what is character when you go 0-4 against Auburn? So Alabama, poster child for the frantically unstable, looks for its fifth football coach in seven years. [Lopresti's writing is frantically unstable, staggering from lust to the theater to poster children.]

It is absurd to hear presidents talk of integrity when they swiftly pull the trigger if they are not in the Fiesta Bowl. [Back to the battlefield... or the firing squad...] It is laughable to hear voices in the media decry the hypocrisy of college athletics, and then eagerly rip into an honest man because he only goes 7-5. [Rip into an honest man is John Wayne talk. "Hell, Judge, I don't know much about the law, but I know when someone's rippin' into an honest man..." And "eagerly" does Lopresti no good at all. Instead of the awkwardness of "eagerly rip," you're supposed to come up with one word that captures the idea. It's the same problem Lopresti had above, with "frantically unstable." In this case, "savage" would do.]

But there are seats to fill and bills to pay, boosters to seduce and talk shows to placate. In some ways, college coaches have it even worse than their cousins in the NFL, who are not held accountable for graduation rates, or if the quarterback ends up in a bar fight. [Again, note Lopresti's example of violence -- the relatively innocuous bar fight, rather than the actual shit everyone's been reading about. And of course NFL coaches are held accountable for the disgusting things their players sometimes do.]

"I realize now this is a business," Alabama center Antoine Caldwell of Shula's fate. "A dirty business, unfortunately."

It is a sport drenched with inflated expectation [This is Lopresti's first mixed metaphor, and it's a stinker. Remember another SOS rule: The more metaphors you use, the more you risk producing mixed ones.], which will be the ugly side of any playoff. That'd bring one champion, but even more hysteria from those left out. Show me an eight-team playoff, and I'll show you a world where only eight jobs are safe. [Lopresti's pretty much off the rails here.]

The BCS comes with high casualties. With a playoff system, it'd be a bloodbath. [Structurally, it's nice that Lopresti returns in this conclusion to his original battlefield metaphor. But polemically it makes zero sense for him to scream bloody murder about cash-happy coaches.]

A survey of hospital review boards that watchdog experiments on patients shows that one in three members takes money from companies that make drugs and medical devices that come under study.

What's more, many of those with conflicts rarely or never disclose their financial ties, according to the study led by Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

The study of 100 university medical centers is said to be the first to look at financial conflicts of interest on hospitals' institutional review boards. The review boards are little-known committees responsible for protecting patients in research experiments.

The study's findings are alarming, said some patient advocates.

If the review board "is riddled with financial conflicts of interest, it's not going to be as protective as it should be," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group.

The study was published in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study, 575 members of review boards at 100 universities were surveyed; they were promised anonymity.

About 36 percent -- or more than 200 respondents -- reported at least one form of industry financial ties in the previous year.

Roughly 15 percent -- or about 80 respondents -- said that in the previous year, they were asked to review at least one research study that was sponsored by a company with which they had a relationship or by a competitor of that company.

Federal regulations bar institutional review board members from voting in a review of a study in which they have a conflict of interest. "This [the study's results] reflect a significant lack of law enforcement," Wolfe said.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the legitimacy of a vote by adjuncts at George Washington University to unionize.

In a brief ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously rejected the university’s attempt to raise questions about who was permitted and not permitted to vote in the election. The court found that the university did not raise these issues earlier in the legal process, when they could have been considered, and that the university could not do so now.



Part-time faculty members voted last year — 341 to 331 — to be represented by the Service Employees International Union, and the National Labor Relations Board certified the election as valid. The university has said that the election was so close that disputes over another 30 people potentially eligible to vote need to be resolved. While the university has characterized the issue as one of “disenfranchisement” of employees, the union has accused GW of dragging its feet on negotiating.

While the appeals court did not consider the substance of the university’s objections, the NLRB previously found it to be “without merit.”

“GW’s case was shameless stalling and the court has now affirmed that the university had no legal justification whatsoever,” said Sean P. Carr, a spokesman for the SEIU.



Union officials have argued that collective bargaining will improve the wages and benefits of the some 1,200 part-time faculty members who work at the university. But GW officials have said that a union is not necessary and could create needless bureaucracy. A spokeswoman for the university said Wednesday evening that officials were “disappointed in the decision because we would prefer that all affected faculty members have had a full and fair opportunity to cast ballots in the election.” She added that the university was still studying the decision so it would be “premature” to discuss what might happen next.

While court rulings have made it extremely difficult for unions to organize tenure-track faculty members at private institutions, adjuncts are not covered by those rulings and have attracted increased union attention — and some notable contract breakthroughs.

'This year’s runner-up was Tim Willcocks’ medieval action novel, “The Religion,” for a scene in which characters grapple passionately in a forge “across the cold steel face of the anvil.”

“In the pit of his stomach a cauldron boiled and some seething and nameless brew rose up through his spine and filled his brain with the Devil’s Fire,” Willcocks writes.


...Other finalists included [a] 1980s coming-of-age story, “Black Swan Green,” for a passage in which one character’s breasts are compared to “a pair of Danishes.”'

Some University of Iowa faculty say they're concerned about potential conflicts of interests resulting from ties between Iowa Board of Regents members and the state's largest health insurance company.

Four current or former regents have served on the board of directors of Wellmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which pays millions in benefits yearly to University Hospitals, the 762-bed hospital that is part of the U of I. Regents professionally linked to the insurance industry seem to have heightened interest in the hospital, faculty members said.

"I don't think it's wise to have such great representation of the insurance industry on the board," said Katherine Tachau, a U of I history professor. "That tends to make situations of the academic hospital loom larger than they would otherwise."

The regents voted Nov. 17 to reject four finalists for the U of I presidency, saying the candidates did not have enough health science experience. The move shocked the U of I community and spurred widespread speculation that Iowa's powerful insurance industry is exerting influence over the presidential search as a way to better control University Hospitals.

[E]ven in their quieter modes, denizens of the Web seem to lug around huge egos and deeply questionable assumptions about how interesting they and their lives might be to others.

I am strapped to a table in a semi-darkened room. Lush, vapid New Age music plays in the background. Two women enter carrying jars of warm peanut butter, one creamy and one crunchy (the peanut butter, that is—don't be vulgar). The women begin slathering the peanut butter on me. ... I have been slathered with [other] unguent[s] [besides] peanut butter, been submerged and sprayed...

Controversy surrounding UNC's new football coach. Butch Davis has signed on to make nearly two-million dollars a year.

Now, one of the most notable names associated with the University of North Carolina wants to know if education is being sacrificed for entertainment. Today UNC's rams club took out a full-page ad in the News and Observer to sell football tickets for next season.

The new coach will make an average of $1.8 million a year and Bill Friday who was president of the University for 30-years is calling a foul. "Any time an institution pays a coach tens more than a distinguished professorship, it's making a statement." Friday add, "We are out of control. We aren't running our own destiny."

Friday also served 15-years as co-chair of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Sports which pressed for reforms inside the big business of college sports. Friday says UNC is taking a step back by throwing big money for an entertainment enterprise. "We teach, we carry forward research, we serve the public. That's the public trust we hold. We are not an entertainment industry."


New coach Butch Davis is also pushing tickets on e-mail messages. Carolina's athletic director Dick Baddour says the school is only trying to keep up with other universities. "If we're going to excel in football as we have in other areas, then we need to be competitive in the market place. And that's what we're trying to do."

Baddour says state tax-payers are not picking up the extra bill on a football salary which is twice as big as the last coach's. "This doesn't have anything to do with the tax-payer. It has everything to do with people who love this program." But Friday says the money is sending the wrong message on campus "When you put the dollar sign on it, that means that's your priority."

Miami football is a biohazard that has spewed poison for too long. It is overseen by a grim-faced little blood sausage of an athletics director named Paul Dee, who answers to a two-faced politician of a school president named Donna Shalala. It is a place where players pack heat in the street and get in brawls on the field, where there is always pretty talk about the team's new image followed by ugly headlines about the same old Miami....[A good new coach] wouldn't fool around with the kind of cretins Miami has pursued over the years. Larry Coker is said to be, and seems to be, a prince of a guy. But he once signed stud linebacker Willie Williams knowing full well that Williams had an 11-arrest rap sheet.

Despite the resources of the university and the football team's boosters, the reward for information leading to an arrest [in the Bryan Pata murder] is $1,000, the minimum amount offered in all homicides. ... [The head of the local Crime Stoppers said] he had not yet been contacted by the university or by any of Miami's famous alumni, like former Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin, who attended the campus memorial last week.

... After eating a catered meal [on the last day of his life], Pata left practice in his black 2005 Infiniti QX56 with personalized license plates, driving down U.S. 1 to Colony Apartments in suburban Kendall....At the University of Miami, he lived a lifestyle more associated with professional athletics than with the academic world. Most conspicuously, he drove that Infiniti with customized rims and an on-board navigation system. On his MySpace Web page, which was still active Wednesday afternoon, Pata referred to the Infinity as "the Big Boy truck."

The Palm Beach Post reported that the Infiniti had been a gift to Pata from his sister's husband, Kahane Andrew Lynes, according to a family member. Yet when Lynes unsuccessfully appealed a trespassing conviction in Miami-Dade County last year, he employed a public defender. Lynes declared himself indigent upon his arrest on trespassing and battery charges in 2003, and again in 2004 as his case worked through the system, according to court records.

Pata arrived at the university in 2003 driving a customized "candy" blue Chevy Tahoe with 24-inch spinners and an on-board television monitor. The truck was a gift, he said, from his mother and his sister. Driving either of the cars, he racked up close to $1,000 in parking tickets and traffic citations, records show.

Although several of the tickets were for speeding, Pata told The Miami Herald that he had yet another car he drove for speed. Customizing cars and selling them on eBay was a hobby, he said.

Another of his hobbies was guns. The police confiscated at least two guns from Pata's apartment after the shooting. ...The culture of gun violence even made its way into the Pata memorial. After speeches by friends and coaches, including Coker, an audience of about 500 students, teammates and family members was presented a video reflection. A song by Tupac Shakur played over photographs of Pata on the field for the Hurricanes. There were images of Pata standing in the water off South Beach with his girlfriend, then a shot of them posing, with wide smiles, on the steps where the fashion designer Gianni Versace was killed.


...After the memorial, members of Pata's large family stood outside speculating about who had killed him. A family friend, wearing a helmet because he had been shot in the head, railed against the Florida International team. His theory was that the shooting was related to the on-field brawl.

Following nearly eight months of scrambling, Eastern Michigan University officials on Monday announced what they believe will be at least a temporary solution to a football attendance problem that, if not dealt with, may have affected the school's standing with the NCAA.

The EMU Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that oversees the university's $145 million endowment and fundraising efforts, allocated $116,000 of its $2.9 million budget to purchase enough football tickets to ensure Eastern Michigan's football program will meet an NCAA minimum attendance mandate.

The announcement comes less than a year after Eastern ranked last among the country's 117 Division I-A programs in per-game attendance, averaging just 5,219 fans - well short of a standard that requires schools to average 15,000 per home game.

"We could not allow an attendance issue to jeopardize our good standing in the NCAA,'' said Darryl Sczepanski, vice president for advancement and executive director of the EMU Foundation. "We saw a major need, and we felt like if (money) needed to come from somewhere, there was no better option than the foundation.''

The $116,000 will be used to purchase 23,000 tickets for Eastern Michigan home games as a way of helping the football program avoid NCAA consequences that could include being put on probation.

The tickets - 5,000 of which were used for Eastern Michigan's homecoming win over Toledo earlier this month - will be distributed to area students who excel in the classroom. Tickets will be given to students attending Ypsilanti, Willow Run, Lincoln and Canton, according to Eastern Michigan athletic director Derrick Gragg. All participate in the university's Football Community Outreach Program.

"For me, this is definitely a win-win,'' Gragg said Monday. "It gives the university affiliation with the community and provides a huge community service piece.''

Gragg, who was hired in April, said the attendance issue has been a top priority since his tenure began. Monday's action comes nearly two years after an internal university committee determined that former athletic director Dave Diles inflated attendance figures, nearly tripling the actual number of fans who were attending Eastern football games.

Last season, under interim athletic director Bob England, actual attendance figures demonstrated that the school was nowhere close to the figures it had reported. After turning in diminished numbers last season, Eastern became part of a list of 12 schools that must average at least 15,000 this season to avoid further NCAA action. Five of the schools on the list - Eastern Michigan, Ball State, Buffalo, Bowling Green and Akron - represent the Mid-American Conference.

The NCAA provided its institutions the option to report either actual or paid attendance, providing schools like Eastern Michigan with a loophole. Gragg said university officials have been searching for a solution for several months, leading to Monday's announcement. Gragg said Eastern Michigan is not alone in using administrative assistance to help boost football attendance.

Eastern Michigan, which has averaged 16,474 in paid attendance, hosts Ohio on Saturday before playing two of its remaining three games at home. The Eagles' Nov. 11 game with Navy will be played at Ford Field in Detroit, which has aided Eastern Michigan's overall attendance the last two years.

But to be safe, Gragg opted to take advantage of the foundation's gift.

"With this purchase, this should put us over the (15,000 per game) threshold,'' Gragg said. "That, in essence, gives me as a new leader here another couple of years to better plan for this going forward.''

Sczepanski said Monday night that no university funds were used for the ticket purchase. Instead, the tickets were purchased by using monies from investment income and Eagle Crest Management Corporation dividends.

In the past, those funds have been put toward a Foundation reserve or to help pay its operating costs. About 65 percent of the Foundation's budget comes from the university, while the remaining 35 percent come from rental income from space leased out in its building and from a for-profit organization.

Gragg said based on attendance projections and the addition of the foundation tickets, Eastern will meet the attendance requirement, taking it off the NCAA list for at least another year. Gragg said Eastern faces no danger of losing its Division I-A football status, which school officials agreed was too important to put into jeopardy.

"This isn't about saving one sport,'' Gragg said. "This is about preserving our entire athletic program and giving our student-athletes the best experience possible."

...The head football coach at UT now makes a base salary of $2.55 million per year. By comparison, the entire instructional budget (faculty salaries and other teaching-related expenses) of UT’s number-one ranked petroleum engineering department is only $2 million. The average salaries of the 11 assistant football coaches last year easily outstripped the average salaries of full professors in our law school, the highest paid full professors at our institution.

Faculty did not have the authority to stop the recruitment of a men’s basketball team whose average SAT score is 370 points below the current student body average. No faculty committee at UT Austin proposed constructing an academic environment for football players that sequesters them in their own high-tech study facility with their own tutors and advisers and supervisors, and still leaves them, year in and year out, trailing the entire Big 12 Conference and most of the nation in six-year graduation rates — 40 percent is the official NCAA calculation.

In 1996-98, at a time when the Texas Legislature was sharply curtailing its yearly appropriations to the UT system, UT embarked on a $100 million stadium expansion project that expended lots of valuable political capital.


...UT [needs to deal with] its extremely high student/faculty ratio. To do this, we need more office space, classrooms and laboratories on the central campus, where space was already at a premium in the mid-’90s.

Disregarding the academic side of institutional planning, the $100 million expansion project authorized by Cunningham and the Board of Regents in 1996-98 converted a multi-use stadium (football, track and field, high school athletics events) into a football-only facility. Precious space was then used to build an outdoor football practice field, an air-conditioned indoor football practice field, a track-and-field stadium, and a deluxe athletics center.

Faculty were not consulted about this questionable use of resources, especially scientists who have to commute from central campus to laboratories at a distant satellite facility. Nor were UT’s approximately 35,000 undergraduates. Faculty would love to accommodate their pressing need for more courses offered during prime time. But existing classrooms are booked solid even during non-peak hours.

When I picked up the Nov. 19 edition of the Athens Banner-Herald and read that members of the University of Georgia faculty have met once again to nitpick what's going on in athletics regarding student-athletes, their majors and their course selections, I shuddered at what we may do next to shoot ourselves in the foot.

The headline, "On lookout for Mickey and cupcakes," is enough to make a grown man weep at its repercussions. The first question is how "Mickey Mouse majors" and "cupcake classes" are determined. Who decides - the czar of "Mickey Mouse Majors" and "cupcake classes?" Who is that "czar" to be? As a former major in physical education, I can think of a lot of people I wouldn't want to hold that position.

If they chose PE as a "Mickey Mouse major," does that mean my degree would be worth nothing? Frankly, it served me well in doing what I had dreamed of doing all my life - being a coach and physical education teacher. And although I made A's in the anatomy, physiology and kinesiology courses, I thought those were the most useless courses I took. I would much rather have had another psychology course, a course in management, or something in sociology in order to have a chance to better learn of the differences in the various socioeconomic groups I would be working with in coaching. That would have enhanced my work as a mentor and counselor for hundreds of young men over the years.

But back to home base. It looks like we still have our knickers in a knot about the low graduation rates for student-athletes, particularly the 9 percent rate of the men's basketball team for student-athletes who were freshmen in 1999 and who graduated within six years. It's strange I haven't seen an explanation for at least part of that poor rate, which would probably be because we had three coaching changes during that period.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with college athletics, at any level, would expect graduation rates to plummet in such a circumstance. Many players choose a college because of its coaches, and when there are changes in the coaching staff, you can count on players transferring. They may graduate later, but once they left under the old NCAA rules, they counted against your graduation rates. With such small numbers involved, there is little wonder the graduation rates would be low in that environment.

In addition, I'm familiar with several of the players in that group who were within easy reach of graduating, but who opted to play pro ball around the world, gaining an education they could never have gotten in college. Hopefully, they'll take advantage of a program instituted at UGA in the 1990s to give former players a chance to come back and get their degrees. Basketball player Robb Dryden, an engineering major at UGA, did just that when he found time during his tenure as a foreign pro player to complete his work. Unfortunately, his graduation put him one year away from counting in the graduation rate. However, I doubt that was on his mind as he traveled the world, chasing one of his two dreams.

If I were UGA head football coach Mark Richt or head basketball coach Dennis Felton - coaches of the only two revenue-producing sports at the university - I'd get very nervous reading stories about a faculty committee discussing "Mickey Mouse majors" and "cupcake classes."

As one of the finest athletic programs in the country, UGA had a profit of $23.9 million this past year. That made it possible to support all the Title IX and men's non-revenue sports to the tune of $13.9 million, as well as making a gift of $2 million to the university. One would think that at some point in time, the powers-that-be at UGA might ask themselves: "What can we do to make certain we are able to assist this program?" That's a particularly apt question when you realize there are very few student-athletes who present problems in admissions and academics as they pursue their degrees. Surely we have the resources to provide the support and assistance these few young people need to earn a degree in an appropriate major, and a legitimate education in something that will bring them success after college.

One way to do that would be to provide some major or majors relevant to what many student-athletes will be doing after earning their degrees. There is a multibillion-dollar sports industry in this country, and Atlanta is one of its hubs. But UGA doesn't really have many majors that address that area. For instance, UGA doesn't have a coaching major set up to provide the type of training coaches should have today. A coach today has to be a father figure, pastor, counselor, strength coach, trainer, primary disciplinarian and much more. The university certainly could develop an appropriate curriculum for that major, and if they need help, I know a volunteer ready to give it.

The one reality that any faculty committee looking into athletics needs to keep in mind is that, whether they like it or not, this is a state university. As such, we will continue to try to have athletic programs similar to those in surrounding states. We are similar to those other state institutions academically, and, hopefully, we can continue to compete with them athletically. I see no reason we can't, as long as we don't destroy ourselves by having too many committees and task forces designed to make life tougher for a very small group of young people, the vast majority of whom will make us proud they are Bulldogs - for both their play on fields and courts, and as graduates.

The University of Miami fired football coach Larry Coker, who won a national championship in 2001, after a season marked by an on-field brawl and the shooting death of a player.

Coker, 58, compiled a 59-15 record in his six seasons at the school after going 6-6 this year. Some 13 players were suspended for fighting during a game against Florida International University in October.

One of his players, defensive end Bryan Pata, was shot and killed off campus on Nov. 7.

Coker will coach the team if it gets invited to a bowl game, Athletic Director Paul Dee said in a televised news conference.

[I]t seems a little extreme to compare a leading institution of higher learning to a Mafia family, but that is exactly what the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has become.

While no one was looking, New Jersey wrested the Most Corrupt State title from Louisiana. Its love affair with bribes, kickbacks and influence peddling can be attested to by all of the politicians – from lowly municipal burghers to state senators and political party leaders – who are doing time in federal prisons.

These public officials are not to be confused with all of the mafiosi doing time in federal prisons for the same things. It's not for nuttin' that “The Sopranos,” the hit HBO television show, is based on a lovably lethal North Jersey crime family that traffics in bribes, kickbacks and influence peddling.

This brings us to the reason for why UMDNJ, New Jersey’s largest and supposedly most prestigious health-care institution, is doing a pretty good imitation of being a mob family.

UMDNJ has been so adept at bribing, kickbacks and influence peddling that it has been honored as the first university in the entire U.S. of A. to be overseen by a court-ordered federal monitor. Not even the Soprano family or the Corleone family of "The Godfather" fame had federal monitors.

The federal monitor was invited to the UMDNJ party because:

* Its politically-wired administrators have let an astonishing $700 million in no-bid contracts, some of which also included kickbacks. Kind of like only doing business with merchants who pay you homage, better known as the Mafia street tax.

* Administrators have hired employees based not on their qualifications, but through use of a secret code identifying an applicant's political patron. The more powerful the patron, the lower the secret code number. Kind of like speaking Sicilian so that no one knows what you're up to.

* They schemed to bilk the federal and state governments out of millions in illegal Medicaid payments. Kind of like scamming old ladies of their inheritances.

Let’s remember that UMDNJ is not a trash-hauling business or labor union, two enterprises that are no strangers to mob influence. UMDNJ is a major teaching hospital. We’re talking brain surgery and root canals, not landfills and construction jobs.

It is that context that makes the federal monitor’s most recent discovery about this mobbed-up institution so mind blowing, even for New Jersey:

For several years, UMDNJ has paid 18 doctors — including some of its most prominent — up to $150,000 a year each in kickbacks to refer patients to its struggling cardiac surgery program at University Hospital in Newark.

That's right, these doctors sent patients to UMDNJ based on lining their own pockets, not what was best — let alone what the best hospital was — for the patients.

It gets worse:

The University Hospital cardiac surgery program has death rates triple to the state average.

'Many Florida State University football fans were relieved when it was announced that the coach in charge of the team's offense had resigned. It looked like the assistant coach had taken one for the team after an embarrassing shutout loss to Wake Forest.

A day later, though, anger kicked in when it was learned that the coach's apparent selflessness was not that at all. He left with a severance payout of $537,000.

Nice payout for a guy who wasn't cutting it.

It would have been bad enough if this was just any assistant coach. But it wasn't. The assistant was Jeff Bowden, son of iconic head coach Bobby Bowden.

Bowden had been criticized for a feckless offense in recent years, but his dad — whose contract is up for renewal in 2008 — defended him.

"It's just amazing," Bobby Bowden said the day after his son's resignation. "When things go wrong the first thing they blame is the offensive coordinator. That's kind of the game we Americans play."

The nepotism here is tragic. What kind of position is the elder Bowden in? The whole world seems to see his son's flaws, but he doesn't. Then the son gets paid to take a hike.

The only good news here is that the funds are not, directly, paid by the taxpayers. The Florida football boosters will pay Bowden with funds they generate from concession sales. Why the state-funded university doesn't use the money for itself, as opposed to paying coaches like this, is another issue.

The Bowden story broke the same day USA Today wrote about the outrageous salaries and perks Division I coaches receive. It revealed Bobby Bowden's annual compensation at about $1.6 million, including a salary of $352,000.

Bowden is one of eight coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference making about seven figures. Oklahoma's Bob Stoops leads coaches with annual compensation of $3.45 million.

And this is collegiate athletics?

As for the Bowdens' windfall, all Floridians are victims of this conflict of interest. The collaboration of FSU President T.K. Wetherell, who signed the severance agreement with FSU Athletic Director Dave Hart, makes this even worse.

Is this the kind of lesson FSU hopes to teach its students? Get a job with dad, perform poorly, then get big bucks to leave?'

The son of Duke University's athletics director will not face jail time in a boating accident that injured his father.

Joseph David "J.D." Alleva, 28, pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Person County court to operating a boat in a reckless manner in exchange for having an alcohol-related charge dropped. He paid a $90 fine and $110 in court costs.

The charges stemmed from a June 23 incident on Hyco Lake in Person County when the Cobalt boat the younger Alleva was operating ran onto a rocky embankment.

The elder Alleva suffered a deep gash to his head that required 42 stitches.

After the 9 p.m. accident, J.D. Alleva swam nearly a half mile to shore for help. It was more than an hour before he called 911.

Though N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission officers reported smelling alcohol on his breath, J.D. Alleva refused a blood or breath test.

Joel Brewer, Person County district attorney, said he wouldn't have agreed to the plea deal if the charge had been a standard driving while impaired.

He said state law allows for the same punishment for operating a boat while intoxicated and operating a boat recklessly. Neither punishment prescribes jail, even considering a DWI charge J.D. Alleva was convicted of in 2001, Brewer said. J.D. Alleva was sentenced to a year's probation and ordered to undergo a substance abuse evaluation for the incident that occurred while he was a Duke baseball player.

Brewer said comparing DWI on the roads and the waterways is "like comparing apples and oranges."

"We think drinking and boating are very dangerous," Brewer said.

"But in terms of active time, the only mandatory sentences are for [standard] DWI."

Neither J.D. nor Joe Alleva could be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

'Every year around this time, Wheaties boxes featuring logos from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University hit store shelves just in time for the annual Oklahoma Bedlam football game.

But this year, the Texas rivalry between the University of Texas and Texas A&M University is on the cereal box.

Oklahoma fans are furious and some are refusing to buy Wheaties because of the covers.'

LAS VEGAS (AP) - University Chancellor Jim Rogers has asked regents to investigate the viability of the system's football and basketball programs.

In a five-page memo to the Board of Regents, Rogers requested an audit of both sports programs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the University of Nevada, Reno, and pushed for the schools to play in the same conference.

UNLV was a member of the Western Athletic Conference, but left in 1999 to play in the Mountain West Conference. UNR joined the WAC in 2000.

Rogers said Tuesday he was frustrated with UNLV's losing football season. The team is 1-10 and has been ranked near the bottom of all Division I-A football teams.

"Why the hell would you have a football team when nobody goes to the games?" Rogers told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

UNR's football and basketball teams have fared better than UNLV's in recent years. The university's football team has an 8-3 record this season.

Although regents have not typically managed athletic programs, Rogers said he wanted the board to monitor the programs and determine ways to make the programs self-sufficient.

Since it last appeared in the NCAA Final Four in 1991, the UNLV men's basketball team has "become stuck far below mediocrity," Rogers said in the memo.

Regent Steve Sisolak said he welcomed the opportunity to provide better financial oversight.

He said regents receive general budgets for the athletic departments, but do not have detailed reports about how much money each sport collects and spends.

Gerry Bomotti, UNLV vice president for finance, said the school's entire athletic program earned $1.2 million last year, excluding revenue and expenses from the Thomas & Mack Center.

But the program last year received from taxpayers $4.8 million toward operating expenses and tuition and fee waivers.

'Nearly 100 people gathered near Laurel Creek yesterday to remember four beavers trapped and killed last week by the University of Waterloo.

The memorial service and demonstration was held near the stump of a tree beavers had gnawed on and which was subsequently cut down by university maintenance crews in the interest of safety. "We wanted the administration to know we care about this issue, that we want a better wildlife policy . . . that's pro-wildlife," said Asha Philar, a first-year environmental studies student. She said she got involved in organizing the rally because she and others wanted to send the university a clear message.

... Many students at yesterday's rally carried signs reading "Shame on you UW." Others wore beaver pins made by gluing backings onto ordinary Canadian nickels.'

[A] lot of [Arizona State University] students ...can't figure out why the [tuition] bill has risen 81 percent in five years (84 percent at UA, 76 percent at NAU). Can't fathom how this year's proposed increases will push the tab nearly 98 percent higher than it was in 2002-03, when [President] Crow arrived at ASU.

Oh sure, Arizona's Constitution may say that college "shall be as nearly free as possible," but think [...] of all the benefits from boosting the bill. [Students will get] . . . well, I don't know what [they'll] get. I couldn't find any students who knew, either.

Maybe the chance to buy out the $950,000-a-year football coach, who was given a contract extension last December? Or the chance to push Crow back into the ranks of the top 10 in presidential pay? [He dropped a few places in the latest survey.]


He has a base salary of only $490,000, after all. Throw in a car allowance ($8,394), a housing allowance ($50,000), deferred compensation ($30,000) and retirement pay ($30,800), and really, how's a guy supposed to live?

ML: All these [big sports] schools have the smooth [academic] track for the football players–

OS: Sociology at Auburn, Criminal Justice…

ML: It’s funny. You watch the Saturday football games, and if it’s West Virginia playing, all the football players are “sports management” majors, but if it’s Ole Miss playing, all the football players are “criminal justice” majors. So you get the sense that every school has its major for the football team, and it’s different from school to school. All the Ole Miss football players aren’t majoring in criminal justice because they have a deep and sincere interest in criminal justice. It’s that that’s where you go to get the grades.



... It’s not an amateur sport. College football is a professional sport for everyone except the people who play it. The coaches make lots of money. The colleges make pots of money. They charge lots of money for their tickets and fancy skyboxes and they can’t get money for their school but for their football team in a lot of these places. And yet the players are by rule–by fiat–amateurs who can’t accept a nickel except for the college scholarships most don’t place any real value on anyway.

If the NCAA really wants college football to be an amateur sport, let’s make admission to the games free. Let’s say that coaches shouldn’t be paid more than the average teacher at the school. Lets cleanse this of money and let the television networks run the games for free. No ones going to do that, of course they’re not going to do that.

They should acknowledge that they have a huge commercial success on their hands, and as a result this is a professional enterprise, and that these kids who have big economic value to these schools should be paid. In addition to being paid, they should be allowed/encouraged as a matter of social policy to form meaningful relationships with people outside the football field.

OS: Okay, so while we’re getting you to talk crazy by telling the truth, let me go ahead and ask you…a central issue for the NCAA this year has been the lingering fear that they are going to have their tax-exempt status revoked by Congress.

ML: HA!

OS: It was mentioned by the outgoing vice-chair of the House Ways and Means Committee that he saw no reason for the NCAA to be a tax-exempt organization because their mission is unclear–and if you read Myles Brand’s answer to our email on this, his answer is elliptical, to say the least–what’s your take on the NCAA, whatever it does, being a tax-exempt organization?

ML: I don’t see why it should be. I agree: why should it be a tax-exempt organization? I think that what’s happened is that universities cleverly use the quarry anti-market status of universities to cloak essentially a big business. I think it all needs to be demythologized.

I think the players remind me of where baseball players were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s where people said, They shouldn’t be paid for playing a game anyway, and that they should be paid a market wage for their labor is crazy. The fact that the university is an institution that has existed outside of the market for so long enables really a corrupt arrangement. And they are–the NCAA–a big business. I don’t know why they aren’t treated as a big business.

OS: Okay. Good. (laughs.) It’s just music to my ears.

ML: I wouldn’t be so upset about it if it was just hypocrisy. But lives are at stake here. The NCAA, in their sweaty desire to preserve the illusion that this is amateur athletics, and that it’s not only amateur but also related to scholarly endeavor, they keep these kids who are going to school to play for their football team out of school altogether.

There’s a little two-line bit toward the end of [my] book that mentions that Memphis high school coaches had done a little study showing that out of every six high schoolers talented enough to earn a D-1 scholarship, only one had made the grades required by the NCAA. I think that if there is a market for these kids' services and getting them out of the inner city, the NCAA should not be in the business of sending them back into it. And we already know that the academic experience of most big-time football players is a sham–not all of them, but…

Why not just say it? That the criminal justice major at Ole Miss or the sports management major at West Virginia is a front for the football program.

OS: Oh, now, you know that “Growing Fruit for Fun and Profit” was a rigorous class at the University of Florida when I was there.

ML: (laughs) It comes at a huge cost, though; not only are kids prevented from getting out and getting to a better life, but what really should be going on is an open acknowlegement that many of these kids are coming in not only unprepared for college, but unprepared for the sixth grade. What they should be getting is the medicine along with their football experience. They should be taught to read and write. They should be taught the things that public schools fail to teach them how to do, so that they actually get something out of the experience rather than this sort of sham education that they get.

It would be reeeeeeal interesting–you’re never going to get to do this–to go around to big-time college football programs, strip out the seniors, take them individually into rooms and test their reading comprehension, test their ability to do simple mathematics, test them on the things a twelve-year old in a good school system would know how to do. Test them and see how many of them pass. I bet it would be shocking how few of them would.

The whole point of sports management or criminal justice is that you really don’t have to be able to read to do it. And so the NCAA fighting to preserve hypocrisy creates a lot of bad, a lot of evil. It is a dark institution.

Mike Holder has a message for University of Oklahoma fans balking at paying top-dollar for Saturday's Bedlam matchup at Boone Pickens Stadium.

If you don't like it ...

"Good, stay home. Don't come," the Oklahoma State University athletic director said Monday. "I don't care if any of them show up. Just bring that football team out here."

This week, the Sooner Nation is finding out why some of the Cowboy faithful have begrudged Holder this season.

Unashamedly increased ticket prices.

As is typically the case with Bedlam in Stillwater, OSU has sold all but a handful of the seats in the stadium's lower bowl, including the entire allotment of opponent seats reserved for Sooner fans. Come Saturday, that portion of the stadium likely will be packed and rocking.

The club-level seating, however, is a different story.

There still are more than 1,000 seats available on the stadium's north side — 47 at the $250 level, 126 at the $300 level and about 1,000 at the $600 level.

If OSU doesn't sell the tickets within the next five days, that will make it a clean sweep for nonsellouts at Boone Pickens Stadium this season — and the first true Bedlam bust in the past several years.

"We're not going to discount any prices to try to fill (the stadium) up," Holder said. "If it doesn't sell out, it doesn't sell out. It's not the end of the world. We haven't sold out one all year.

"We don't rely on them for anything. Are you kidding me? Rely on OU?" [Your problem is you can't rely on OSU.]

Tom Johnson, who manages the OSU ticket office, said comparing previous Bedlam games to this weekend's in terms of attendance is like comparing apples to oranges. The last time the Sooners and Cowboys met in Stillwater, there weren't club seats on the stadium's north side — OSU fell less than 50 shy of selling out the south side club — and four years ago, there wasn't any club seating at all.

Back then, not selling out the club level was not a possibility.

"People are buying them now; they're just not selling at a real high rate because the tickets are more expensive," Johnson said. "But the thing is, the club area is a different animal than the lower bowl. It's not like to like." [Hope you followed that explanation.]

OSU usually packages a lower-bowl OU ticket with a couple of seats for games against weak or nonconference opponents. This year, the three-game mini-pack included tickets to Missouri State, Baylor and Oklahoma for $160. On Sept. 18, tickets to Bedlam were released for single-game sale at $100.

OSU and OU fans alike gobbled up those remaining tickets, leaving the expensive club level to latecomers, not all of which seem eager to pay the markup.

"They're fairly priced," Holder said. "All they are is one-sixth of the donor seating cost, plus the cost of one-sixth of the season ticket price. We're not going to discount those seats. How would you feel if you were a loyal Cowboy supporter who bought the season tickets and then for one game you allowed somebody to come in there and sit for half price? [You'd feel like an idiot. But then you'd feel like an idiot anyway, for paying what you did.]

"That's just not right in my world."

Club seats aren't the only thing adding stress to the tenuous Bedlam atmosphere this week. [Not sure what the writer means here, but "tenuous" isn't the right word. ]

Visiting student tickets are more expensive, too.

OU student John Portman paid $88 for a student seat at the Red River Shootout in October. He thought that was the steepest ticket price he'd have to pay all season. He was wrong.

Oklahoma State is asking $100 for visiting students this weekend. And Portman, for one, is miffed.

"Bedlam's a big deal, but asking $20 more than an OU-Texas ticket is ridiculous," he said. "I don't know why they would raise prices like that. No one wants to give that much money to a school that can't fill its own stadium." [Ouch. Truth hurts.]

Not that Holder is concerned with pleasing OU fans. In fact, he'd rather sell tickets to those decked in orange and black.

"It's a different world up here now," Holder said. "This isn't the same old Oklahoma State. Look in that (west) endzone. My gosh. Our tickets are less expensive than the ones at OU. They sell 84,000 of them. We should be able to sell 44,000. [Yeah, but you can't. 'Cause you live in 'your world,' and everybody else lives in this world.]

"We're not going to cut ticket prices. If we want to compete with the best teams in this conference, we've got to increase our ticket prices. If we start winning, (fans) will come out."

Despite the game's billing as one of the most important college football showdowns in recent memory, the demand for high-priced tickets may no longer be greater than the supply.

A month ago, there were almost no ticket auctions on eBay that ended without a bid. Now there are tickets - mostly with opening bids of more than $1,000 per ticket - that go unsold.

This may be partly the result of concerns about safety in Columbus. Horror stories about the treatment of Michigan fans have stopped some fans from pursuing tickets.

[One student] said one of his roommates had planned on joining him but decided to stay home to avoid what [the student] called the "danger aspect" for Michigan fans.

STILLWATER -- Oklahoma State University graduate Bill Bearden has been a regular at Bedlam football games since the mid-1970's, but will not attend Saturday's OU-OSU clash at Boone Pickens Stadium.

While describing himself as an "avid fan" of Cowboy football, basketball and wrestling, Bearden says economic issues have sidelined him and his family during the 2006 football season.

After having held four season tickets during most of the last 25 seasons, Bearden says he did not purchase 2006 tickets because of OSU's price increase.

"I decided it was time for me to stop going to the football and basketball games," said the 52-year-old Bearden, owner of a convenience store in Morris. "The pricing is definitely too much for a lot of people.

"I'm glad Boone Pickens is supporting the university, and I understand what the university is doing with facilities, but I don't think the average OSU alumni are cut out for that level. It has become a corporate deal, sort of like the NFL." [Can you hear the resignation in Bill's voice? Twenty-five years of loyalty and now he's just had it. But how expensive can these tickets be? Hold on to your hat.]

Saturday's 1:30 p.m. contest matches 13th-ranked Oklahoma (9-2) with a 6-5 Cowboy squad that ranks seventh nationally in rushing offense and scoring.

It's an attractive matchup, replete with Bedlam rivalry emotions, but the game is not expected to draw a sellout crowd. [Whoa. You mean after all this shit about football country, football this and football that you can't even fill a real small stadium for one of your biggest games?? Just what sort of price are we talking about?]

The Cowboys have not had a sellout crowd for any of their five previous home dates. [Them's home games. ] The season-ticket sales total crested at 33,000, down from last year's figure of 37,500. The current attendance average is 40,581, down from last year's figure of 44,860. [They're dropping like flies.]

"We've all noticed the (empty) seats this year," Cowboy offensive tackle Corey Hilliard said. "It's kind of disheartening, but at the same time, all you can do is just go out there and play. I wish there were a way for our fans to be there without the high prices." [I'll say it's disheartening. It's not like this is some pansy school like the University of Chicago. This is fuckin' Oklahoma! ]

Said OSU linebacker Jeremy Nethon: "It's not about the fans that aren't there. It's about the fans that are there. We're playing for them and for our team." [Glass half full kinda thing. Whatever gets you through the night. ]

With a seating capacity of 43,500, Boone Pickens Stadium is the Big 12's smallest football venue. [Don't even need many people to buy tickets, in other words. I smell a rebellion.] As of 5 p.m. Monday, remaining tickets were priced at $250, $350 and $600. There were 43 of the $250 seats (located between the 25- and 35-yard lines on the south side) and 114 of the $300 tickets (at midfield on the south side). [Finally we get to the hard numbers. My oh my.]

Each of the 1,426 remaining club seats goes for $600. A donation is built into the price of those tickets. As the countdown to Bedlam kickoff has begun, OSU officials acknowledge that there probably will not be a huge rush for the $600 tickets.

Before this season, the most expensive single-game ticket in OSU football history went for $75 (for the 2004 Bedlam game). This season, the Texas A&M single-game ticket was priced at $75 and Nebraska at $85. OU-OSU single-game tickets, priced at $100, have been sold out since September.

OSU's basic season tickets increased from the 2005 price of $231 to $295 this year. Club-level tickets rose from $231 to $395. Attached to the purchase of a club seat is a required donation of $1,500 to the Posse Club. [Known 'round Stillwater as the Your Ass in A Sling Club.]

Ticket revenue is poured into the athletic department's operating budget. Pickens' $165 million donation, along with the money generated from the investment of that donation, is committed to the stadium renovation and development of the Athletic Village.

"If anything, I underpriced the tickets," OSU athletic director Mike Holder said. "We're still seventh in the league in pricing, relative to our competitors. And we're in a stadium that in some cases seats half as many people.

"I wouldn't be satisfied with finishing in seventh place in the league. If we want to play with the elite football programs in the Big 12 Conference, then we need to price our product accordingly." [Got some big ol' Cowboy fans tellin' you what you can do with your product.]

OU sold 71,000 season tickets this season. Its most expensive single-game ticket was $85 for the Texas contest in Dallas. OU's other single-game ticket prices were $57 (for the UAB and Middle Tennessee games) and $67 (for the Washington, Iowa State, Colorado and Texas Tech games).

During his press conference on Monday, Cowboy coach Mike Gundy said he was not aware that OSU was offering Bedlam tickets priced at $250, $300 and $600. [Sound like a big ol' piece o' cow patty to me.]

"There are a lot of things that I have to worry about, and that's not one of them," he said. "That's somebody else's job. What we do is try to put a team on the field so that the six times we play (at Boone Pickens Stadium), people leave here and felt like they enjoyed the game and it's been worth coming to." [Sound like you better ratchet up that worrying... Maybe you can make up some of the difference outta your salary?]

What matters is merely the sell, which increasingly means the hype. The actual product comes last in priority. With free markets comes great freedom but also some responsibility: to publish books worth publishing, to air TV shows actually worth airing, to care about content as well as ratings and sales. Those criteria are distinguishable from what the market will reward. That distinction has been lost in many places. It is not a criticism of the market; it is merely a reminder that markets also require integrity among those who work in them. That point deserves recovering.

Cotton, for thousands of years one of the most important crops for clothing and shelter, might also become a source of food.

A chemical called gossypol makes cottonseed inedible for humans, though some of it is used in feed for cattle, which are less affected by the toxin.

Now, researchers at Texas A&M University have genetically modified cotton to produce seeds with little or no gossypol.

It's a step they say could help provide valuable protein to millions of people.

News Corp. says it has canceled publication of the O.J. Simpson book and television special "If I Did It."

In a two-part special scheduled for next week, Simpson discusses the murders of his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman.

Fox quotes News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch as saying he decided that the project was "ill-considered."

Several Fox affiliates had chosen not to broadcast the special, in which Simpson talks in hypothetical terms about his role in the killings.