'As an audiotape spread on the Internet, Alabama coach Nick Saban acknowledged Wednesday using a phrase considered derogatory to Cajuns but said he doesn't condone such language and merely was repeating something a friend told him.

Saban, a former LSU and Miami Dolphins coach, used an ethnic slur Jan. 3 while telling Florida reporters in Tuscaloosa an anecdote about an LSU fan's angry reaction to his hiring.

When asked about the LSU fans' reaction, Saban related a phone call from a friend on the LSU board of trustees, whom he did not name. In what seemed to be an attempt at humor, Saban told of the friend's encounter with an LSU fan, who speaks in a Cajun dialect.

"He was walking down the street yesterday before the Sugar Bowl," Saban said on the taped comments. "He calls me. There was a guy working in the ditch, one of those coonass guys that talk funny."'

Oregon has proven itself a state where a significant number of its residents apparently do not value higher education for themselves or their offspring and are therefore not disposed to support it. It may be a working class mentality, it may be a negative reaction to academia ("Eggheads") [Fine, eggheads. But why capitalized, and why stuck in a parenthesis?], it may be due to a lack of vision among the general population about the difference higher education can make in a person's job and career prospects. Whatever the reason or reasons [just go with "reasons"], the disposition of so many Oregonians not to advocate for the support of higher education in Oregon is probably why so many of the current members of the Legislature are dragging their feet on the governor's proposed budget. In fact, it has been reported that a number of them view the proposed increases as unrealistic and unsustainable. We may have to settle for a low [national] ranking and give up on trying to keep up with the "Joneses" [Drop the quotation marks.]. The alternative for those who espouse the increases being to move to a state where research on the subject discloses more support and a higher ranking! [Number of problems here: "Espouses" is the wrong word. "Support" would be better. Then when you get into the "being to..." formulation it's just awkward -- you end up with a sentence fragment. Rewrite more simply: "Supporters of tax increases should move to a state..." And drop the exclamation point!!]

What's also got me talking to myself [Nice folksy transition.] is the question of salaries for all the administrators at institutions like the University of Oregon. I found it impossible to determine Dave Frohnmayer's salary or the salary of anyone working directly for him or in a teaching or other support position at his school. Using the Internet by way of every search engine I could put to the task, I was frustrated in my effort to find out what he and they are paid. I even called Frohmayer's office and got nothing but a run around...

There is a reason that you pay attention to serious fiction writers. Sometimes they are ahead of the curve and like John on the Isle of Patmos, where he penned Revelation, they warn us in poetic and dramatic ways of ills to come. Mississippi, last in almost everything to do with money, is pretty much first in the written word and one William Faulkner saw this thing coming. In a number of novels he talked of the Snopes clan, a greedy breed of rapacious and oveweening- gain- at- all -cost folks come to power after the civil war. In Faulkner's imagination, they were the ones who would do anything to win, fairness and honor be especially damned.

Flem Snopes is running Tuscaloosa.

'Gov. Sarah Palin has asked Jim Hayes [scroll down to "92 Counts..."] to resign his post as a member of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. It’s a request that Hayes reportedly declined.

Palin’s Chief of Staff Mike Tibbles spoke with Hayes on the telephone late last week and asked him to step down, according to Sharon Leighow, the governor’s deputy press secretary. Hayes denied that request, Leighow said.

“That was followed up by a phone call by Gov. Sarah Palin herself who requested Regent Hayes step down, and again, it was my understanding, that he said no,” she said.


[This one's shaping up to be a real embarrassment for Alaska, which has had its share of embarrassments lately.]

... The governor, who appoints regents to the 11-member board, does not have the power to remove Hayes. Only the Legislature can do that, with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses.'

[The article ends with a bunch of stuff about the hapless legislature, which'll never pull itself together to vote on this, let alone get a majority vote.]

'...At a Scrabble tournament in Toronto, a piece of software called Quackle triumphed in a best-of-five series over David Boys, a computer programmer who won the world Scrabble championship in 1995. The open-source program's chief designers include Jason Katz-Brown, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also happens to be one of the top-ranked Scrabble players in the world.

Quackle's win did not come easily. Mr. Boys leapt out to a quick lead against the software, winning the first two games thanks to words like "pithead" and "redyeing." But the computer program roared back and took the final three tilts, making a couple of outstanding plays -- like "deviating," placed through two disconnected I's that were already on the board -- that even top-level human players would be hard-pressed to spot.

Quackle earned the right to play Mr. Boys by edging out another Scrabble-playing program, Maven, in a series of games against expert human players. (Quackle finished the Toronto Computer vs. Human Showdown, as the event was called, with a gaudy 32-4 record, while Maven could only muster a 30-6 showing.)

Mr. Boys seemed to have no trouble keeping a sense of perspective after the loss: "It's still better to be a human than to be a computer," he said....'

The beast needs to eat. It always needs to eat.

There are expectations to meet. A stadium to expand. Championships to chase. TV viewers to entertain. College football poll voters to impress. A state rivalry to control.

The beast needs to eat. It always needs to eat. Sometimes it eats things that could embarrass the beast. Sometimes it eats things that make me wonder if the beast considers itself bulletproof. [All these choppy, choppy little sentences... Usually, of course, this is a bad idea. But there's a primitive something about the whole beast thing that seems appropriate for this me-Tarzan approach...]

It appears that Willie Williams is going to enroll at the University of Louisville and help the Cardinals chase a national title next fall. He is a linebacker who can run like Reggie Bush, hit like Brian Urlacher, fly like Superman. He can feed the beast.

He is also a linebacker who symbolizes good tackling skills will always be more important than good citizen skills in big-time football. You take a guy who can outrun a halfback, even if he has trouble outrunning the law. ["Outrun a halfback...outrunning the law." Clever.]

Williams enrolled at the University of Miami in 2004 with a record that included a reported 11 arrests, including a felony charge of setting off three fire extinguishers during a recruiting visit to Florida as well as a misdemeanor battery charge for hugging a woman without her consent. [Funny stuff, and the writer knows enough to leave it alone and simply report. The message that this dude is seriously fucked comes through all by itself.]

Williams played one uninspiring season for the Hurricanes. Word is he left Miami because of playing time issues. There have not been more arrests.

There were reports he would enroll elsewhere. Never happened. Tennessee reportedly balked. As did West Virginia. Other Top 20 programs balked, too.

So Williams spent last season at a Los Angeles-area junior college. Now, after a recruiting visit here last weekend, he appears prepared to bring his 6-foot-3, 235-pound body to U of L.

It makes you wonder if the Cardinals are taking this idea of becoming the next Miami in the Big East Conference too far. [His readers don't need elaboration of the reference to Miami, and UD's readers shouldn't either. Less is more.]

U of L wouldn’t consider hiring a coach or a dean with this guy’s resume. That would be embarrassing. This should be embarrassing. Williams will be a storyline wherever the Cards go. [What would blogs like mine do without recruits like Williams?]

Bryant Northern was booted from the basketball program with a shorter rap sheet. But Northern wasn’t the prospect Williams is. Standards are different if you can feed the beast.

This will be sold as a story of redemption, another Father Flanagan moment. Everybody deserves a second chance. Some deserve a dozen - especially if they run the 40-yard dash in a time that makes pro scouts hyperventilate. [This is absolutely wonderful. Father Flanagan is a marvelous touch.]



...This is a risky walk across a high wire. Some guys reward schools for taking chances. Some fall -- and flatten coaches, administrations and teams on the way down.

Ohio State took Maurice Clarett - and won before things got ugly. But remember what renegades did to Miami, Oklahoma and Colorado.

It happens a lot in football, a sport where an Illinois judge just cleared Tank Johnson, a Bears lineman with a rap sheet, to travel to the Super Bowl, a sport where the Bengals’ 2006 season imploded to the sound of police sirens.

But the beast has to eat. Now, it’s going to eat at Louisville. [Brings his theme to a nice, neat end. Well done.]

'Three Guilford College football players face assault and ethnic intimidation charges following an on-campus attack on three Palestinian students, authorities said.

...[Three students] were beaten with fists, feet and brass knuckles in an attack early Saturday involving at least 15 members of the school's football team, according to court documents. The attackers called the Palestinians "terrorists" and used racial slurs during the attack.

School officials believe a total of about 12 people were physically involved in the altercation ...


The attack is believed to have happened early Saturday morning... Authorities have charged [three students]... with ethnic intimidation and assault and battery, the News & Record of Greensboro reported Tuesday. They were released Monday on $2,000 bond. The men were listed on the school's Web site as members of the football team.

... Guilford [is] a school in Greensboro [North Carolina] founded by Quakers....

"It was the most horrific experience of my life," [one student] told the News & Record on Tuesday. "This was a horrible, unprovoked hate crime."

[He] said he was diagnosed with a concussion and had trouble walking on his own for several days after the attack...'

I’ll wager that students don’t realize how seriously most of us profs take those student evaluations.

Administrators surely do, and they weigh them in decisions regarding salaries and promotions. Second to grading papers, these can be the least pleasant experience in teaching. We all want excellent evaluations because we want to think we are good at what we do — and we want students to like us.

'Reactions to Putin’s regime vary, but they form a certain pattern, falling within a given range. At one end of the spectrum, there is virtually unconditional endorsement of the Russia that is now emerging. The leading exponent of this view, the economist Andrei Shleifer, helped – not coincidentally – to lay the foundations of the new order, working in Moscow as one of the drafters of Yeltsin’s privatisations, and beneficiaries of the proceeds. Project director of the Harvard Institute for International Development, financed by the US government to promote ‘economic reform in support of open markets’ in the former USSR, he was prosecuted by the Justice Department on his return to the US for criminal conduct – cashing in on his insider position for investment purposes. Harvard had to pay $26.5 million, and Shleifer and his wife $3.5 million to settle the charges against him. This was the scandal that led to the downfall of his patron Larry Summers, who as Clinton’s deputy secretary of the Treasury set up the Harvard project, and was then implicated in the pay-out, as president of the university.'

[A]n on-campus stadium at this point, after recent tuition increases and budget cuts of historic proportions, is a dessert menu item that should have been financed 100 percent with private money. Students should not be paying for it, taxpayers should not be paying for it and the University should not be ordering dessert when it can't afford to pay for the main course.

Rutgers University gave hefty raises this season to football coach Greg Schiano's inner circle, with one assistant getting a bump of nearly $30,000, according to a review of employment contracts.

Most of Schiano's six-figure coaching assistants got double-digit raises even as the university reeled under state budget cuts that forced the elimination of 825 jobs.

Salaries for nine coaches now range between $115,000 and $185,000, according to the contracts obtained by The Record under the state's Open Public Records Act. Each also gets a $7,200 annual car stipend and an additional one month's pay -- a bonus for getting the Scarlet Knights into the Texas Bowl.

The contracts for 2006-07 were signed in the fall as the team embarked on its most successful season, one that saw the once-downtrodden program crack the national rankings for the first time in 30 years.

At the same time, the rest of the university was suffering from nearly $80 million in state aid cuts that resulted in the job cuts and cancellation of at least 459 course sections. Athletic Director Robert E. Mulcahy III also announced plans to cut six high-performing Olympic sports that cost a combined $800,000.

But football was spared the pain. As much as $3 million from the university was pumped into the $13 million football budget this season.

Mulcahy said he hoped that increased revenues from ticket sales would close the gap and allow the program to be self-supporting as early as next season. Experts say it generally takes consistent winning seasons for programs to begin to turn a profit.

Mulcahy said season-ticket sales for next season's home games already have doubled to 23,000 and sellouts are anticipated. When asked about possible expansion of the 41,500-seat stadium in Piscataway, Mulcahy said: "We have to look at all options. I'm a businessman."

Schiano will be paid more than $1.13 million for 2006-07 as a series of bonuses has kicked in for milestones in the team's winning season. The coach's contract, which runs through 2012, also provides him with a Cadillac Escalade.

The contract may be renegotiated upward, however, after the team's celebrated 11-2 season. Schiano, 40, won several national coaching awards, sparking interest from other teams. The charismatic coach has also snagged some of the nation's top recruits for next year.

"I am going to treat him fairly, given all the great interest in him,'' Mulcahy said, when asked whether Schiano will get a better contract.


... Elsewhere in the university, raises averaged between 6.5 percent and 7.5 percent, said spokesman Greg Trevor. President Richard McCormick, who makes $525,000 per year, did not accept a raise this year, nor did most other members of his Cabinet, said Trevor. Mulcahy said his salary was frozen as well.

"Post-National Gastroidentities. We will attempt to answer the question of how food, cuisine, and gastronomy play an important part both in the strategies to instrument normalcy through the imagination of the modern Nation-State, and the ways in which discourses affirming nation, race, ethnicity, hospitality, the universality of humanity, interact with each other fragmenting the national gastronomic field and undermining the unpolluted self-understanding of the modern Nation-State."

If the Carter Conference is like a reunion for former federal officials, journalists and academics, then Leo Ribuffo is the unpopular kid sulking in the corner.

The George Washington University professor, who participated in a roundtable discussion on Carter's legacy Friday, strayed from the party line about how wonderful and historic the conference is, comparing it to a high school reunion.

"We're going to hear two days of fond memories, which is understandable, but as scholars, I think we should look at things with a certain level of detachment," he said.

The self-described "unreconstructed McGovernite" returned to the theme after former Vice President Walter Mondale attacked Vice President Dick Cheney for giving President Bush false information and bad advice after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"I remind you that there will be a conference like this one day about Bush, and indeed a positive one about Cheney," Ribuffo said.

'Finally, the University of Georgia will get press for something other than football, alcohol or fraternity misbehavior when the Carter Conference begins this Friday.'

'The truly rich schools can and should simply end tuition for all. Harvard, Yale and Princeton, for example, all earn at least $75,000 in endowment income for every student, including graduate and professional students. With other private gifts and government grants, total non-tuition income per student far exceeds $100,000. This is several times the national average spending per student. If Berea College, Coopers Union and the service academies can be tuition free, so can Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The reason they are not is that these schools do not want to engage in a modest amount of belt-tightening that such policies would entail, and do not want to end the explosion in the salaries of their most prominent faculty and administrators that has gone on in recent years. Rent-seeking behavior trumps access issues or the national interest.'

...Students and academics claim that bowing to market pressures and ending the state monopoly on tertiary education will lower the standard of education for all and further divert resources from chronically underfunded state universities.

Opponents — who include left-wing opposition parties and labor unions — also fear that additional numbers of university students will reduce the value of state degrees and create a two-tier system.

In my 12 years as president of the University of Oregon, I have watched debates that pit the various elements of higher education against one another.

These debates assume that the success of one comes at the expense of the other - research or teaching, undergraduate education or graduate, in-state students or out of state.

These are false dichotomies.

Equally spurious is the debate that pits athletics against academics. To argue that one must choose academic excellence or athletic excellence is an oversimplification.

Academic quality is the cornerstone of our identity as a public research university. It is defined in our mission statement, "a community of scholars committed to the highest standards of academic inquiry, learning and service."

Duck athletics is an integral part of this university, and we should demand and expect the same degree of excellence on the athletic field as we do in the classroom.

The relationship between sports and academics is kept in proper perspective by basing every decision related to athletics on the fundamental principle that athletes are students first.

We take great pride in such measures of our academic success as the graduation rates of our student- athletes.

Our mission is to achieve excellence in all areas of the university - the classroom, the laboratory and the athletic field. From Bill Bowerman to our prize-winning faculty to our 19 Rhodes Scholars, the UO legacy for academic and athletic distinction can and will continue side by side.

Sometimes I wonder whether I care to the point that I neglect other things, like, oh, my job. Tweaking the blog is seductive in a way that a print deadline never is. By the time I am done posting entries, moderating comments and making links, my, has the time flown. I probably should have made some phone calls about next week’s column, but maybe I’ll write about, ah, blogging instead.

There has always been a feedback loop in journalism — letters to the editor, the phone and more recently e-mail messages. But a blog provides feedback through a fire hose. The nice thing about putting out a newspaper was that, at some point, the story was set and the writer got to go home. Now I have become a day trader, jacked in to my computer and trading by the second in my most precious commodity: me. How do they like me now? What about ... now? Hmmmm ... Now?

'It is really unfortunate and surprising that Gov. Riley has chosen to defend the payment of $4 million by the University of Alabama to the new football coach Nick Saban. His stipulation that the pay will not come from taxpayer money is oversimplification at its worst.

Even the common man on the street knows that such a big expenditure will now force the university to raise its tuition fees, cut scholarships, increase stadium ticket prices and quadruple the lease payments of its stadium concessionaires. Even the donors to the Alabama athletic program will now have to multiply their contributions to offset the pay raise of coach Saban.

Sadly, ordinary students and middle-class ticket holders will be the main victims of such misappropriation of university funds. How about the parents of the students who now have to suffer additional financial burdens by paying more for their children's tuition fees? Are they not Alabama taxpayers?

Such a very big payout also sends a very wrong signal regarding the priorities of the university. It now becomes very apparent that education is no longer the No. 1 priority in the campus. It is also now clear that boosters run the university, instead of academic minds.

It is also perplexing that the university is pleading for more money from the state educational trust funds, but at the same time has the audacity to squander annually $4 million of university funds to gain football prestige. UA is an educational institution, not an NFL franchise.

Mark Esmero
Montgomery'

"University of Tulsa head coach Steven Kragthorpe was earning $327k in 2004, $402k in 2005. I don’t know how much in 2006 – that tax return isn’t available on Guidestar.org just yet. The university president earned $276k and 264k in those two years. Tulsa is the smallest Division I-A school in the NCAA and this private university has an endowment of around $750 million.

Rice head coach Ken Hatfield was earning $489k in 2004, $425k in 2005. The university president earned $425k and 604k in those two years. Rice is the second-smallest Division I-A school in the NCAA, but this private university has a staggering endowment of over $4 billion.

Then Rice hired University of Tulsa defensive coordinator Todd Graham to replace the retiring (because he was on a long losing streak and they made him) Ken Hatfield. They got a bargain, paying him about $325k per year. After just one year he’s leaving Rice (no great surprise)... to go BACK to Tulsa (what! Why?). For a reported $1.1 million annual salary!

We’ve been looking at the Tulsa tax return... then the Rice tax return... then the Tulsa tax return...and can’t figure out where the money is coming from. Tulsa has less than 1/3 the revenues, less than 1/5 the endowment, fewer students and lower tuition rates. Clearly they really, really love football in Tulsa."

Nick Saban, the new head football coach at the University of Alabama, is receiving a salary of $4 million per year, as I'm sure you're aware. You're probably not aware of who I am or how much your University is supposed to be paying me a year. [Starts with the obvious: Massa Saban, as one of UD's readers calls him. Hasn't really said anything nasty yet, but you just know it's coming. Cast your eyes to the letter's last paragraph, where she returns to Saban. She knows how to structure a good essay, giving it a nice rounded feel by invoking the massa at the beginning and at the end.]

My name is Sara Penrod. I am a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. I am a member of the University Honors Program and the Blount Undergraduate Initiative. As a National Merit Finalist, I was offered a full academic scholarship to UA and accepted despite great offers from other colleges. My family has a legacy at this university, and I wanted to continue it. [Simple straightforward unemotional writing. Good way to start. Notice that her sentences will become more complex as she moves along and chronicles the complex screw-ups to which she's been subjected by the university's administrators.]

The bureaucratic idiocy I've had to endure at this university makes me wish I had accepted some other college's offer. [Coming in for the kill here, with the word "idiocy."] Before I even started the fall 2006 semester, I've dealt with administrative mistakes. I understand that mistakes are inevitable, especially at a university the size of UA. The main problem is denial of problems and lack of responsibility. [A basic rule from English Comp 101 being followed nicely here: Always concede stuff at various points in your polemic. Makes you look generous, rational, level-headed.]

During the fall semester, my housing, class registration and even my meal plan were messed up. I made many, many visits to the offices of scholarships, admissions, financial aid, student receivables and dining services. I still lived in a study room in Julia Tutwiler Hall for the first month of the semester and had no working meal plan for the whole semester, despite having the money for all of this taken out of my scholarship money.

This semester, I returned from Christmas vacation to find a notice from the University stating that my spring 2007 registration has been canceled for nonpayment. I never received any prior notification, so I didn't know there was an error that needed to be straightened out.

Now I have been booted out of all of the classes I registered for several months ago. This will set me back for the rest of my undergraduate career; since enrollment is limited, I won't be able to get back in the classes I need and will effectively waste an entire semester. [Now we get to narration. Note that she chronicles her woes calmly, but does not avoid strong language, like "booted out."]

No one on this campus seems to know what the problem is. I once again have talked to people in the offices of Student Receivables, Scholarship and even Admissions. The best I can piece together is the problem, it seems, is that my scholarship has been "lost" again [ The two uses of "is" are awkward. A little rewriting needed.], but no one in your administration seems capable of finding it. [The "your" is very good. Reminds us that this is a letter to the president.] No one will take responsibility for fixing the error, and meanwhile my academic career is being ruined. [Ending the paragraph with the word "ruined" is excellent.]

As I said earlier, you don't know me, and you could probably care less. I'm just one more campus-wide ID number. [This late in the game, she can let it all out. Her anger is palpable. Fine. I'd, though, have written just "campus ID number," rather than campus-wide.] If I leave in total frustration at this university's unwillingness to deal with errors, it won't matter to you. I'm just collateral damage, as long as you get your 28,000 students by 2010.

[Here comes UD's favorite part!] As long as you have a winning football team to keep the alumni donors happy, you can pay a football coach $4 million a year and not think a thing about "losing" an $8,000-a-year scholarship for one more National Merit Finalist. [See what a gift Massa Saban is? Rhetorically, he's given the university the equivalent of the Elgin Marbles.]

Perhaps the problem is that I've been working under the assumption that the University of Alabama is an institute of higher learning. I appear to have been mistaken. It is a temple for the worship of dead pigskin wrapped around cotton. [Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Lovely.]

What's one bright, talented National Merit Finalist and honor student, more or less? I see clearly now where this illustrious university's priorities lie.

'The next time someone in Alabama gripes about the educational ranking in the state, let me remind them of hard empirical evidence regarding how highly education is thought of in Alabama.

The recent hiring of Nick Saban by the University of Alabama for a reported $32 million reflects Alabama's commitment to education.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education web site, the average salary of a full professor (the highest academic rank, and hard to get) was $97,800. That means that football at UA is valued 327.2 times more than academics.

And you wonder why we rank last in just about everything?

Henry Barwood
Troy'

'Gov. Ted Strickland wants to make Ohio's chancellor of higher education part of his cabinet, under his direct control. We think it's a plan worth pursuing, given the highly unsatisfactory state of higher education in Ohio. Placing the chancellor directly under the governor's control, Strickland said yesterday, will increase his ability to foster improvements in college graduation and opportunities for getting a college education.

... Strickland's plan to bring the chancellor into his cabinet is unique among the 50 states, according to an Associated Press story citing a Harvard University expert on university leadership searches. The expert, Judith Block McLaughlin, sounded critical of Strickland's idea, noting, ''It's treating education as if it were a state agency and subjecting it to political influence'' which runs counter to the traditional balance between ''accountability to the government'' and ''intellectual independence.'' But what about Ohioans' unmet need for a decent, affordable college education? The Regents don't seem to have a grip on it and could use help.'

'[James J.] Duderstadt said that when the flagship university in Alabama, ranked near the bottom in state spending on higher education — the state’s entire budget for need-based aid in 2004-5 was $3.35 million, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs — offers a coach $32 million, it sends the wrong message about priorities. (In a nod, perhaps, to perceptions, Saban donated $100,000 this week to a scholarship fund at the university.)

Worse still, Duderstadt said, is the possibility that the enormity of the contract is the last straw for lawmakers looking to take aim at not just the nonprofit status of college sports but of higher education as a whole.'

Sure, Alabama is all smiles now as it has landed its savior coach, Saban. But Moore should ask Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich what it's like to deal with a coach with a perpetual wandering eye. Saban should be content at Alabama, but what happens if he can't dominate recruiting the way he did at LSU? What if he comes to [the] realization that the program he left behind in Baton Rouge is better than the one he takes over in Tuscaloosa? Will he desire to go elsewhere? Plus, the precedent-setting contract Moore gave Saban is sure to making him a pariah to athletic departments across the sport.

We Alabamians can finally say we are No. 1 one in the nation in something -- the highest paid football coach. We not only have one, but two, of the highest paid coaches within the top six in the United States -- Nick Saban at $4 million a year, and Tommy Tuberville at $2.23 million.

But where is Alabama ranked within the nation in health care, the poverty level and public education? Schott's Almanac, 2007, reports Alabama is tied with West Virg