'THE LONGHORN ECONOMY

The University of Texas athletics department is among the nation's biggest and best. But as it prepares to spend more than $100 million this year, some ask: Are there limits?

$107.6 million

This year, the University of Texas athletics department will for the first time spend more than $100 million. That's double the amount of just six years ago. Since 2000, sports expenses have grown twice as fast as UT spending overall.

The rapid growth is the result of the Longhorns' financial independence. Unlike other departments at the University of Texas, athletics gets to spend virtually everything it earns.

And thanks largely to income generated by the UT football team (and, to a lesser degree, men's basketball) the department earns plenty. The Longhorns' move to the Big 12 conference in 1996 gave the team additional national exposure. That, coupled with the team's on-the-field successes and an explosion in expensive luxury seating (next year the football stadium will boast three premium club seating areas and 111 suites costing between $50,000 and $88,000 a year each) have tripled football revenues over the past ten years, to about $63 million this year.

At the same time, UT has made a deliberate decision to limit the intercollegiate sports it supports. Ohio State University's athletic department also spends about $100 million per year on sports. But the Buckeyes have twice as many teams as the University of Texas, which has one full time athletic department employee for every two student-athletes.

Indeed, following a national trend, the number of Longhorn student-athletes has fallen slightly, so the amount of money the university spends per athlete has soared, from $113,000 in 2003 to $210,000 this year. That's 10 times the average of all Division I and II schools, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It's eight times what the University of Texas spends educating each student.

Administrators say that because the sports program is self-supporting the importance of such numbers is exaggerated. "We eat what we kill," said Ed Goble, the athletic department's chief financial officer.

Critics disagree. "There is no justification for such escalation," said Donna Lopiano, a former UT women's athletics director and recently retired CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation. "It's an embarrassment to spend $100 million on 500 kids."

An athletic department that spends money simply because it can results in "a degree of extravagance that is totally out of whack with what transpires in the rest of the university," said UT accounting professor Michael Granof, who points to sports facilities he terms "beyond opulence." He, along with other reformers, has proposed merging athletics into the university's general fund so its rapidly growing expenditures — four coaches and an administrator now earn more than the university's president — can be reviewed alongside other departments' budgets.

UT's spending also has consequences that reach far beyond Austin, said Dan Fulks, an accounting professor at Transylvania University who studies university sports finances for the NCAA. Programs like UT's, he says, drive up the cost of all college sports — and, in some instances, the price of higher education in general — as schools with less-lucrative teams scramble to maintain a pace of spending that NCAA President Myles Brand has called "not sustainable."

Fewer than 10 out of more than 1,000 college athletic programs nationally make money or break even, according to Brand. (Fulks puts the number slightly higher.) That means 99 out of 100 schools subsidize the cost of intercollegiate sports, often in the form of student fees, which according to the College Board are rising at a rate faster than inflation.

Trying to keep up with athletic superpowers compels competitors to literally mortgage their futures for sports. At Big 12 rival Texas Tech University, four in every 10 dollars of the school's annual debt service goes to repay loans taken out to build or rehab sports facilities.

The loan payments have made Tech's football program one of the most expensive in the country, according to NCAA figures. Last year the athletic department ran a multi-million-dollar deficit, which wiped out its reserve fund.

Big-time sports can cost schools money in other ways, too. This spring, an analysis of Division I-A schools by the Journal of Sports Management found athletic department donations represent a larger and larger share of total university giving. "In some cases, the increase in athletics giving may be coming at the expense of academic gifts," said co-author Jeffrey Stinson, a North Dakota State University marketing professor.

Most schools operate on athletic budgets a fraction the size of UT's. But a review of the Longhorn's expenses by the American-Statesman shows that, in ways big and small, there is a huge difference between athletic programs that buy what they need — and those that spend $100 million.




Longer seasons, chartered jets

UT administrators cite many benefits of the school's athletic department, including rallying school spirit and increasing freshman applications. Locally and nationally, the publicity generated by the Longhorns bathes the entire university in a pleasant burnt orange glow.

"It certainly gets our alumni and community involved in our campus," said President William Powers,Jr., adding that participating in intercollegiate athletics "is a valuable experience for student-athletes."

Lucrative sports programs do allow some students to attend college who might not otherwise get the opportunity. The UT athletic department will pay the university about $7.6 million this year to cover the full or partial cost of tuition and room and board for 412 student-athletes on scholarship. A third of that goes to football players.

The scholarship figure has grown every year as the price of attending UT has risen. But it also reflects the increasingly competitive nature of big-time college sports.

At schools like UT, many athletes stay in school year-round. For football and basketball players, summer sessions are virtually mandatory to get a jump on conditioning and to take summer courses to supplement academic calendars later cramped by practices and games. The extra summer sessions cost $364,000 for football alone.

A winning season adds more to the scholarship bill. Post-season play means athletes are still "in school" when others are home on vacation, so their expenses must be covered then, too. That cost $222,000 last year for football players. When added to the summer costs, one in every four football scholarship dollars is spent on covering expenses incurred when most other students are not in class.

The trend of year-round sports is spreading. Last year the men's swim team's summer scholarship bill tripled; the women's track and field summer costs doubled. In all, $1.27 million will go toward covering athletes' summer and post-season costs this year.

An athlete's education costs more than a regular student's in other ways, too. The athletic department this year will pay $1.79 million—- $450,000 for the football team alone — to tutor and assist Longhorn athletes with their classwork. That's up more than a quarter from two years ago and works out to $3,500 per student-athlete, in addition to the regular $8,000 annual cost of tuition. Academic counselors who travel with the teams add more in travel costs.

UT hires about 200 tutors each year, not all simply to help with classwork. While the Longhorns don't break down tutors' tasks, a review of Texas A&M's athletic budget shows the department paid $30,000 to "class checkers" who make sure athletes attend classes. UT pays $32,000 a year on "quality control" — essentially football dorm supervisors who help the coaches.

The cost of travel rises yearly, and Texas spends more on it than any school except Wisconsin, Ohio State and Florida — all of which boast more student-athletes than UT, according to a database of financial information compiled by the Indianapolis Star.

The Longhorns' success is partly responsible. Arranged at the last minute, post-season travel costs more than regular season trips. The UT baseball team's travel bill doubled between 2005 and 2006, thanks to post-season play.

When the Longhorn football team won the 2005 national championship, it was invited to the White House. The athletic department picked up the tab — $143,000, plus $19,000 for lunch. (A&M spent $16,000 on tickets to Seaworld and the San Diego Zoo during its Holiday Bowl trip last year.)

The Longhorns also travel in higher style than many other schools. Every year the athletic department charters about 20 flights, at approximately $90,000 each, from Continental Airlines.

Sometimes it's to get players back to school more quickly, to get to locations not easily serviced by regular flights or simply to make trips easier on the team. This year's men's basketball travel budget jumped by nearly a third after the team started taking larger commercial charters instead of regional jets so they could avoid refueling stops.

Other times the Longhorns spend the money because they can. By tradition and Mack Brown's preference, the football team charters planes to football games in nearby Houston and Dallas. Each practice, football players board a bus near the football stadium and ride it to the practice field to keep them out of harm's way crossing major intersections on foot. The service costs about $300 per day.

Hydroworx and PlayStations

Big-time schools know that attracting a steady stream of top high school athletes is crucial to their continued success, and the University of Texas spends about $1 million a year recruiting and flying star prospects to Austin. What the teenagers see when they arrive is important, and the school is constantly burnishing its facilities.

Darrell K. Royal-Memorial Stadium is in the midst of a $175 million rehab eight years after a $90 million upgrade; the baseball stadium is getting a $26 million facelift. The golf teams play out of a new $1.5 million clubhouse on a course that just got a $500,000 upgrade.

After the facilities are completed, the meter keeps running. Thanks primarily to the football stadium upgrades, the Longhorn athletic department's yearly debt service will double over the next year, to about $15 million annually. Utilities — air conditioning, heat, water — and maintenance cost the athletic department another $4.75 million a year — $115,000 just to keep the department's grass football, softball and soccer fields soft and green.

Heavily recruited high schoolers expect flashier personal amenities, too, and UT obliges. Following its Rose Bowl victory, the football team was rewarded with a $200,000 renovation of its players lounge, a retreat with four TV projectors (screens drop from the ceiling at the push of a button embedded in a six-foot replica of the UT tower), six flat screen TVs, four X-boxes and three PlayStations.

Two floors down, the football locker room boasts another new lounge area, with five flat-screen TVs and a three-dimensional, lighted 20-foot Longhorn on the ceiling. Men's and women's basketball players can relax in their own private living rooms, each with large TVs, video games and recliners. (New recliners cost $15,020 last year.) The golf teams have a private player lounge at their new clubhouse.

The Longhorns spend about $3 million a year to outfit and staff athletic facilities with trainers, therapists, physicians, chiropractors and masseuses. There are four weight rooms. The football team recently purchased the latest in treatment for sore muscles and recovering bodies: a new hydrotherapy room costing $155,000. This year, it added a rehab pool with an underwater treadmill monitored by video cameras ($43,000) and cold-water pool ($23,000).

Nutritional supplements — Gatorade, Powerbars, etc. — cost $180,000 last year. Medical bills — what the university pays to treat its injured athletes beyond what their personal insurance covers — added just over $600,000, 40 percent of that to treat football players. A high-tech system that monitors an athlete's core body temperature from afar cost $7,000.

The athletic department continues to show its appreciation once recruits become Longhorns. Each year, it gives various rewards to players and personnel — letter jackets and blankets, but also rings, watches, iPods and other swag earned for conference victories and championships. The gifts totalled $537,000 last year.

The department spends about $35,000 annually on the Hall of Fame luncheon for female athletes. By tradition, the football team goes to a movie the night before games: $700.

UT athletes never lack for the best gear, either. Under a sponsorship deal (being renegotiated), Nike provides a $1.6 million annual allowance for equipment purchases, which the Longhorns regularly exceed.

The football team alone bought $408,000 worth of gear in 2006. Upon arriving on campus, each player receives 40 separate pieces of gear and apparel, including multiple shirts, shorts, tights, sweats, gloves, warm-ups, towels, practice shoes, game shoes, running shoes, cross-training shoes and sandals. Everything is replaced when torn, broken or well-worn.

'If the world were different'

The Longhorns' other constituency is those it depends on for revenue — paying fans. Much of the sports program's soaring income is attributable to the explosion in premium seating and well-heeled fans, in particular, are lavished with attention.

Last year, the department spent $380,000 to rehab Athletics Director DeLoss Dodds' suite overlooking the football field, where he hosts donors and dignitaries. (The suite's food and drink bill for last year's Ohio State game: $1,257.) Another $340,000 was spent entertaining the Letterwinners Association, comprised of former athletes.

Money spent wooing and thanking big-spending fans — part of "development" — will come to $3.6 million this year. That includes subsidized parking and parties for big donors on game days in premium seating areas — this year the Goalpost Club was added to the Endzone Club and Centennial Room — and gatherings throughout the year for Longhorn Foundation supporters. The Longhorns employ 14 full-time athletics fundraisers. (The Aggies have 18.)

About $262,000 will be spent in 2007 preparing, cleaning, maintaining and stocking the luxury suites for football, baseball and basketball. (Stocking the football coaches' wives suite costs about $800 a game).

Making money costs money, and last year the athletic department hired two new salesmen to hawk basketball tickets more aggressively. Transforming the department-produced TV show, "Longhorn Sports Center," from a seasonal to a year-round feature added $160,000.

Today's fans demand more than just a game; Longhorn fans demand even more. The football stadium's new high-definition video and sound system that debuted last year cost about $9 million, much of that for the scoreboard. Less known is that UT also paid $3.9 million to buy out the company that owned advertising space on the old board.

Each home football game costs about $400,000 to host, a quarter of that for security, including $3,500 per game for bomb-sniffing dogs, an expense added since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and $682 a game for the Texas Ranger who shadows Brown. The $50,000-per-game cost of running the football scoreboard doesn't include special programming; last year's new Running of the Horns introduction cost $23,830.

Every game also typically features a theme to entertain and inspire fans. Hence last year's bills for "rental of camo decor package" ($2,030), "wagon props for visual motivation" ($3,200) and "cage with wildcats for visual motivation" ($1,125). A "Just Do What You Do" banner cost $3,900.

Other diversions add up. Paying the Longhorn band to go to the Rose Bowl cost about $500,000. Entertainers who perform at basketball games cost between $500 and $1,000 a game.

When the football team won the national championship, the party the department threw for the campus a week later cost $92,838.67.

In all, the Longhorns expect to spend $107.6 million in the 2007-08 season. UT president Powers says that while such a large tab is "always an issue, to a large extent, it's a business decision."

"If our revenues decreased, if the world were different, we'd have to change," Goble said. "But we're able to maintain our philosophy. Because we have the resources."'

'...[The] flip side of political pressure threatening free expression at universities is political correctness, which also seeks to censor.

Rarely has that been more abusively displayed than when several hundred faculty members from University of California campuses demanded that an invitation to [Lawrence] Summers, 52, to address the board of regents at a dinner in Sacramento be rescinded.

When Summers was president of Harvard, he once indelicately raised the question of why more women didn't excel at math and science. It was an ill-considered and clumsy comment. It's inane, however, to charge, as the anti-Summers petition did, that this makes him the symbol of "gender and racial prejudice in academia."

Yet the California board of regents was cowed, and it canceled the appearance of one of America's most gifted public figures. ...'

'What traits can you inherit from a sugar daddy?

Inside Boone Pickens Stadium, on the Boone Pickens podium, in front of the Boone Pickens mike, under Boone Pickens light bulbs, Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy created a must-see YouTube episode last week in a clip off the old block.

He was the spittin’ image of his platinum donor. In an off-the-rails tirade, Gundy smeared Jenni Carlson of The Oklahoman over her column on the Cowboys’ demoted quarterback, Bobby Reid, during a 3-minute-20-second attack on her credibility, reporting skills and lack of Lamaze training. [See how the women, in sports stories, are the men? They're the ones touching base with reality.]

“That article had to be written by a person that doesn’t have a child and never has had a child that’s had their heart broken and come home upset,” Gundy shouted. And then, in need of a cleansing breath, he added: “Come after me! I’m a man! I’m 40.”

His midlife crisis aside, Coach Gundy called Carlson’s story line fiction but refused to point out the errors. He simply created his own truth by reversing reality. Did he swift-boat Carlson? Did he make his cash daddy proud? [I'm a kept woman and I'm loving it.]



Boone Pickens is the turn-around artist of oilman lore who once twisted John Kerry’s character as the lead financier behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign. Pickens has also been linked to the political group Stop Her Now.

Who knew he meant Carlson and not Hillary?

Was Pickens behind Gundy’s outburst? Or did Gundy simply snap as the picked man?



It isn’t a stretch to wonder how deep Pickens’s influence runs inside an athletic department awash in his cash. About 90 percent of the nearly $300 million Pickens has given to O.S.U. has been earmarked for sports. About 100 percent of the Cowboys’ coaching decisions are all but approved by Pickens. [See now, a university president with balls'd be able to keep ol' Boone back. But you got a girl running things at O.S.U.... I mean, not a real girl! A guy who's a girl.]

Gundy is his guy — one of the many. The size of Pickens’s tax-deductible love for his alma mater is historic but in lock step with every tycoon who has mistook [Mistook? Shouldn't that be mistaken?]a focus on education to mean high-def TVs for the team.

The math book doesn’t lie. The Chronicle of Higher Education released a report last week that detailed how gifts to 119 of the largest athletic departments in the country have, in some cases, tripled in recent years, but donations to academics have remained flat.

•

Devotion to the fight song has devoured disposable income for the booster who charges every purchase of team spirit — from skybox views to seat licenses — on a Visa card with a team logo that puts cash back into the pocket of the program.

Nick Saban, alone, has Alabama donors emptying their houndstooth cookie jars and Roll Tide money clips to pay an eight-year, $32 million deal filled with the C.E.O. perks from a Jack Welch dream. All this after the public university laid out nearly $6 million to sack Mike Shula and his staff last year. [Do me again. Please.]

... Nothing can abate this warped priority spending — not even death. Last spring, Oklahoma State’s athletic department took out life insurance policies on more than two dozen aging boosters. As The Chronicle explained, when a donor passes on to the Cowboy ranch in the sky, the O.S.U. athletic department will inherit $10 million per participant in a plan whipped up by — who else?— Boone Pickens and labeled, The Gift of a Lifetime. [What's zat, honey? You want me to try necrophilia?? Um... okay...]

If not death, the tax man may be the only one to stop this eternal excess. In what constituted an ethics audit last year, the House Ways and Means Committee asked the nonprofit N.C.A.A. to justify its tax-exempt status given its membership in what the author Robert Frank might term “Richistan.”...'

'...Have you ever failed a student?

Oh, yes! In fact, after I failed one particular student, her mother gave me a gift certificate for dinner at a fine New York restaurant because she said that I was the only honest person her daughter had ever dealt with.

The most embarrassing moment you’ve had as a professor?

As chairman of the English department I dashed off a letter to Deans Bynum and Yatrakis, hit the spell check and change button to correct any errors, and the letter arrived to Deans Atrocious and Benumb.

...If you could only teach one book to Columbia students?

Ulysses....'

'Texas A&M football coach Dennis Franchione said Thursday he has discontinued a secret e-mail newsletter sent to select boosters willing to pay $1,200 per year for team information that Franchione routinely has withheld from the public.

"I knew it was probably going to be controversial," Franchione said. "I certainly didn't mean for it to be that. When I knew you guys were starting to ask around a bit, I thought, 'Maybe we shouldn't do this.'"

The Express-News recently began inquiring about the newsletter operation after obtaining a copy through a third-party source. After being told of the newsletter, A&M athletic director Bill Byrne met with Franchione to express his concerns.

Byrne did not ask Franchione to stop the newsletter, A&M sources said, but strongly suggested that it would be the prudent thing to do. An A&M spokesman said Byrne was unavailable for comment.

In the newsletter, called "VIP Connection," Franchione discussed player injuries in detail and offered sometimes-critical assessments of his players.

The newsletter, it was learned, has been distributed the past three years to about a dozen subscribers, each of whom had to sign a letter of confidentiality to receive the newsletter.

Subscription proceeds, Franchione said, were used to underwrite his personal Web site, coachfran.com.

Since taking the A&M job after the 2002 season, Franchione has routinely sidestepped media questions about injuries — except those of a season-ending nature — often with the comment that it is not "our policy" to discuss them.

Yet, Franchione — through his personal assistant, Mike McKenzie, who wrote each newsletter — freely offered up personnel information to elite boosters willing to pay for it.

Two days before A&M's opener against Montana State earlier this month, six players were listed in the newsletter as "unavailable for action." The newsletter included each player's name and his injury.

"A seventh player, Roger Holland, is iffy," the newsletter said. "He recovered drastically from a mile (sic) concussion carried over from Sunday, but not fully."

The newsletter also provided a candid assessment of the Aggies' receiving corps.

"Privately, Coach told me last night that Earvin (Taylor) and Pierre (Brown) are very steady but with average speed," McKenzie wrote. "Kerry (Franks) has great speed, but (is) inconsistent in receiving."

McKenzie, who arrived with Franchione in late 2002, is a part-time athletic department employee. His other duties include ghostwriting Byrne's "Wednesday Weekly" column on A&M's athletic department site.

Franchione and McKenzie denied benefiting financially from the newsletter. Because of the confidentiality agreement, Franchione said, he doesn't believe any of the subscribers used the information for gambling.

"We asked them to sign something," Franchione said. "And for them not to do that."

He added: "Most of these people are tremendously loyal Aggies."

Many other major-college coaches, including Texas's Mack Brown, have their own Web site. Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, through his Web site, offers a "Coach's Club" membership for $39.95 per year. To members, Beamer's Web site promises "the best, up-to-date, daily practice and injury reports straight from Coach Beamer, right off the practice fields."

Unlike Beamer, Franchione kept his subscriber list small and the newsletter a secret.

"We just had people with an interest and that are close to the program," Franchione said.

McKenzie called the newsletter a "goodwill" gesture.

"The whole point of it was for them to be informed about the program, straight from the head coach," McKenzie said.

A consulting firm in Bryan hosts and operates the Web site, McKenzie said, and also handled subscriptions. Refunds have been offered, McKenzie said. He said he wasn't sure how many subscribers, if any, have asked for their money back.

McKenzie said that because the newsletter no longer was a secret it had to be discontinued.

"The private correspondence between a head coach and the individuals involved had been violated," McKenzie said. "It was compromised."

Franchione has been on the receiving end of heavy fan and media criticism since his team's poor performance in a 34-17 loss to Miami last week. The Aggies host Baylor on Saturday in both teams' Big 12 opener.'

'A Scott County woman who was sexually assaulted in her dorm room at the University of Northern Iowa has sued the school, accusing leaders of improper recruitment and supervision of athletes and botching how they handled the incident's aftermath.

The woman, who was an 18-year-old freshman at the time of the November 2004 assault, filed the lawsuit in Scott County District Court after the state denied her claim for $1 million in damages.

The assault and the college's reaction, the lawsuit states, "had a devastating impact on (her) life and education. She has suffered from feelings of violation, humiliation, and a loss of personal security and self-confidence.

"(The woman), who had been a good student in high school, found it increasingly difficult, after Nov. 12, 2004, to continue studying at an institution that had, with the exception of a few supportive individuals, shown little regard for her well-being, but had instead demonstrated great animosity toward her."

She eventually dropped out of school, the lawsuit states. The school sent her tuition bill to a collection agency, she said, and the dean of students told her he was "disappointed in her because she didn't tough it out."



Panther football players Baylen Bernard Laury and Joseph Roy Thomas, both of Texas, were charged in connection with the November 2004 rape of the woman. Laury entered an Alford plea of guilty in October 2005 to an assault with intent to inflict serious injury, an aggravated misdemeanor, after three hung jury trials. Thomas pleaded guilty to third-degree sex assault and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

A representative from the University of Northern Iowa declined comment. The woman's attorney could not be reached for comment. The Courier does not name victims of sex abuse unless given permission to do so.

In the lawsuit, the woman alleges:

UNI football officials knew that certain recruits and athletes had criminal backgrounds and other "records of misconduct making it more likely (they) would engage in acts harmful to women."

College officials, she said, failed to take action to prevent them from engaging in such behavior. She also alleges that the football program knew of sexual harassment and assaults by recruits and athletes and continued to recruit athletes with criminal records, including one person with a sex assault charge.

After the assault, the college's sex assault counselor told her she "could not help with the situation" and that the woman should go to the student health service.

Administration did not contact her after the assault, she said. A meeting with UNI's president, requested by the woman's mother and grandfather, resulted in a referral to the dean of students for her accommodation requests, which included academic assistance, counseling and a move to a new dorm.

The result of that referral, the woman says, was that she "was ultimately required to walk around campus and ask various individual faculty members for accommodation, despite the dean of students being aware of the traumatic effects of the rape and (her) ongoing fears."

The woman's grandfather informed the dean that the woman slept with a dresser pushed in front of her door and that "walking around asking individual faculty members for accommodations was not working."



She received harassing phone calls, which she reported. She was told that "football players could not be controlled in their free time" and that she "needed to just tough it out."

The woman did commend the campus police department for being "considerate" and helping her receive a medical evaluation after the assault.'

'TWO LESS DOCTORS IN THE HOUSE -
HEBERT, WILSON BACK AWAY FROM
Ph.D.'S ISSUED BY DIPLOMA MILLS

[Should be FEWER, not LESS. When dealing with discrete objects -- specific people, in this case -- use fewer; when dealing with anything else (gasoline, love, time), use less.]

Two of Fort Bend County's top elected officials this week have opted to stop referring to themselves as doctoral recipients, having been informed they may have broken Texas law.

In 2004, County Judge Bob Hebert took credit for earning a Ph.D. from California Coast University [a judge, no less], while County Clerk Dianne Wilson began referring to herself as “Dr. Wilson,” based on a title she earned through Kennedy Western University, now known as Warren National University.

It turns out since at least 2005, however, it is a crime in Texas to promote degrees from either school. The Texas Legislature that year passed a law which let the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board created a list of schools, “whose degrees are illegal to use in Texas.” Both California Coast and Warren National were included on the list.

The law made it a Class B misdemeanor to use “substandard degrees” to apply for jobs in Texas.

Wilson, who has been particularly insistent on calling herself a doctor [This is a common and pathetic feature of diploma mill stories. You can often spot mill users by the insistence they bring to their title.], this week changed her standard telephone greeting, which for years thanked individuals for “calling the office of Dr. Dianne Wilson, Fort Bend County Clerk.”

“I took an oath of office that I would uphold the laws of the state and country, and that's now a law in Texas, so I'm honoring it,” she said on Thursday. [Before it was a law, when it was just immoral, I was fine with it.]


The hubbub, say both officials, began on Monday when a reporter with Houston's Channel 11, KHOU, told them of Texas Penal Code 32.52, which is the law passed by the Legislature in 2005.

“Certainly when I realized there was a law like that, I removed it from my (campaign) Web site and took it off my wall,” said Hebert. [He's a judge. This is like Glenn Poshard, a university president, having to be told that in your scholarly work you put quotation marks around quotations.]

Hebert said he found a reference to his California Coast degree on the county Web site, and had it removed. Otherwise, no changes will need to be made to any county stationery or legal forms, he said.

Wilson, however, said she will alter references to herself in county paperwork as well as in software programs used by the county.



Both California Coast University and Warren National University (then Kennedy Western) in 2004 were named by the U.S. General Accounting Office as “diploma mills.” The GAO, which monitors federal spending, specifically took to task the use of taxpayer money to pay for federal employees' enrollment in the schools.

California Coast University on its Web site does claim accreditation by Distance Education and Training Council, but that agency is not recognized for accreditation by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. [It's common for mills to make up their own accrediting agencies and then accredit themselves by them.]

As for Warren National, it does not bother with any accreditation.

“The true recognition of a Warren National degree comes from its voluntary acceptance by the business, professional and academic communities,” states the school's web site. [Fuck the GAO.]

Hebert said he will consider his Ph.D. a matter of personal history, and contends he did not use it to “apply” for a job, having first been elected as county judge in 2002. He was re-elected in 2006, but did not face an opponent. He also readily points out the MBA he earned through Pepperdine University in California came the “traditional” way.

“I don't think it makes a hill of beans about what people think about my service as county judge,” he said regarding the doctorate controversy. [He's probably right. But people have been known to get upset when they realize that their judges are both ignorant of the law and tend to break it.]

Wilson defends her use of the degree, pointing out her work included writing a dissertation.

“I will say, I'm disappointed because I did the work, I did the study course. I did the test. I wrote the dissertation, but I will honor the statute,” she said. [What a great gal. She'll honor the statute.]...'

'...[P]ublic concern, if not yet an outcry, is on the rise.

For many parents, the cost of college casts a long shadow before and beyond the time their child actually spends in college. With financial aid lagging behind tuition at private institutions and state subsidies declining at public ones, it gets harder every year for low-income students to pay their way. Like hospitals, colleges have generally got the benefit of the doubt on the question of why they cost so much...

...It’s happening at every rung of the academic ladder. ...[A] review panel sharply criticized the senior administrators at Virginia Tech...

...College presidents, naturally, are armed with answers. ... [U]niversities and faculty members have been raking in royalties from technologies ...

...How are college students treated in this brave new academic world?

... [S]o why, especially in view of the immense explosion of knowledge requisite for a true education, shouldn’t the time allotted for college stretch too?

... But college should be a place that fosters open debate of the ethical issues posed by modern life ... They can be profoundly transformative experiences that bolster the motive — indeed, the need — to live a life of civic engagement.

... As our children go through the arduous process of choosing a college and trying to persuade that college to choose them, it will be a sign of improved social health if we can get to the point of asking not about the school’s ranking but whether it’s a place that helps students confront hard questions in an informed way.'

Labels: SOS

Snow


The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

'RESOLUTION TO ABOLISH PROGRAM FORTHCOMING
By Brent Schrotenboer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

September 27, 2007


A longtime San Diego State faculty member is sponsoring a resolution to abolish the Aztecs football program [Whoa! Talk about the shooting the moon.] because of its failure to generate revenue as promised and because of the strain he says that puts on academics.

Leon Rosenstein, emeritus professor of philosophy, said the resolution will be introduced at Tuesday's faculty senate meeting.

He and other faculty don't expect the resolution to succeed, largely because even if it passed a senate vote, the resolution would only serve in an advisory role to SDSU President Stephen Weber, who steadfastly backs football [Steadfastly ain't the half of it. The man's an obsessive. This sort of faculty intervention may be the only thing that can do any good].


But Rosenstein said his intent is to generate discussion about what he calls “lies” about athletics funding through the years. Such a resolution never previously has been introduced, according to Rosenstein, who has logged more than 25 years with the senate.

“We constantly get these statements that (football) will make the alumni contribute and that it's really going to make money,” Rosenstein said. “But then when you ask where the money is, they say it isn't here yet, that it'll be here next year. Then next year comes and it's still deficit after deficit after deficit. You get tired of the lying.” [The faculty gets tired of the lying. Everyone else at SDSU seems happy to be treated year after year as if they're mentally challenged.]

SDSU football has failed to relieve an athletics budget that in recent years has needed about $2.5 million or more from other university sources to make ends meet. Last year, after an eighth straight nonwinning football season, SDSU athletics needed about $2.7 million in “one-time” funding, which came largely from a university broadband contract. This year, one-time funding has been projected at $2.645 million, out of a total budget of about $27 million. That's in addition to about $5 million from the state general fund and about $5 million from student fees.

Rosenstein's resolution states this shortfall of nearly $3 million could be enough to staff “approximately 550 courses with part-time faculty or to establish 35 new tenured full professorships.” Rosenstein, who came to SDSU in 1969, said the philosophy department formerly had 18 tenured members; now it has nine. Other departments have had similar staffing issues, he said, at a time when students in general education courses have increased.

Weber wrote in a statement in May that SDSU expects “investments made in football in the last two years will take time to bring a return.” SDSU spokesman Jack Beresford said yesterday the SDSU administration declined comment on the resolution.



Like a great majority of other Division I-A athletic departments, SDSU operates in the red and needs support from the university general fund, student fees and other university sources. But at SDSU, those university allocations have represented about 42 percent of its athletics budget in recent years. That's roughly double the Division I-A average for university allocations to athletics (21.6 percent), according to NCAA research released in May. [Note that percentage, please.]

“If you look hard enough you're always going to find somebody on campus who wants to get rid of sports,” SDSU head coach Chuck Long said. “But football is such a vital part, as well as athletics, of your university. It's so healthy for your school. It gets your students involved. It's great for a campus. I don't know why you would try to get rid of something like that.” [Beautifully and powerfully expressed.]

Rosenstein said he targeted football because “that's where the real cost is.”

“If football fed itself and supported itself, I've got no problem,” he said.

Football had $7.3 million in expenses in fiscal 2005-06, according to the most recently available audit report. Its revenue, which includes tickets, donations and conference funds, was $4.77 million (not counting $890,353 in university support). Since 2005-06, coaching salaries increased, but ticket sales decreased. [University football programs lavishly reward losing coaches.]

Other faculty members who have spoken up on the issue say they're not football haters.

“I think there are people here who would say, 'Show me the numbers, and if the numbers work, this is great,' ” said Steve Barbone, associate professor of philosophy. “But if the numbers don't work, you've got to fix it.”

Rosenstein said he expects a movement to quash his resolution on technical grounds because this year he is serving as a substitute member of the faculty senate. Faculty Senate Chairwoman Edith Benkov said she's “not sure it's in the bylaws for a substitute senator to introduce a resolution.”

Rosenstein disagrees with that but says even if he's not allowed to introduce it, he has colleagues who will.

“The sad fact is that football has a Halliburton-esque 'cost-plus' contract, whereas dull, boring academics has to get by on the leavings,” English professor Peter Herman stated. “The more people hear about this, both inside and outside SDSU, the better.”' [Well, UD's doing her bit. She heard about it because the newspaper knows a story when it sees one, and now she's writing about it on her blog.]

'Resolution regarding Football at SDSU

To be presented to the SDSU Senate on October 2, 2007

Whereas football at SDSU (commonly known as “The Aztecs”) for the past several years appears to have been running a deficit in the neighborhood of 3 million dollars each year,

Whereas, despite assurances to the contrary, year after year, this deficit has continued, and year after year there has been no reason to believe that this situation will change,

Whereas it has been claimed that football helps to bring money into the university, but there has been no proof to support this claim; indeed, there is only evidence to the contrary,

Whereas it has been stated on this Senate floor that “it takes money to be the best, and the Aztecs just want to be the best” as a way to justify continued deficit spending on athletics while there is evidence that academics is not funded “to be the best, ” ignoring the academic needs of many departments,

Whereas the permanent increase lobbied for by President Weber himself at the May meeting of the IAA for Athletics of $2.7 million (which exceeds by almost ¾ million dollars the permanent budget increase recommended for Academic Affairs), certainly seems to indicate this year’s plan for covering anticipated future deficits,

Whereas the salary of the head coach of the Aztecs and his 12 assistants as reported in the Union Tribune (over $2 million) exceeds the entire budgets of some, if not many, academic departments,

Whereas this apparent annual $3 million deficit would be adequate to staff approximately 550 courses with part-time faculty or to establish 35 new tenured full professorships throughout the university or to add 2 full professors to every department in the CAL or to cover the full cost of the entire faculty salaries of some smaller colleges,

Whereas, San Diego State University’s mission is an academic one, not an entertainment one, and, as an institution of higher learning should dedicate all its resources to teaching, learning, and research,

And Whereas any additional funds (i.e., funds not already dedicated to specified purposes) in possession of the University should be used for that mission and not for extra-curricular activities that carry such a high cost burden,

Therefore Be It Resolved That it is the sense and will of the SDSU Senate that football (“The Aztecs”) be abolished effective with the end of the Fall 2007 semester and that this occur not withstanding any prior contracts or commitments of any kind.'

...'[T]he issue that garnered the most attention, both from senators and critics in the higher education establishment, was the question of how much universities should dip into their endowments each year to offset rising tuition costs.

“Senators, what would your constituents say if gasoline cost $9.15 a gallon? Or if the price of milk was over $15? That is how much those items would cost if their price had gone up at the same rate that tuition has since 1980,” said Lynne Munson, an adjunct fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which supports increased transparency at universities.

Munson argued in her testimony that the public is not benefiting enough from “massive” higher education endowments, noting returns that averaged in the double digits (referencing data from the National Association of College and University Business Officers), but “miserly” payouts, averaging 4.2 percent. She outlined the concentration of wealth in a minority of top colleges — both public and private — with 62 institutions boasting endowments of over $1 billion, up from 39 in 2004.

But private foundations — which tend to have smaller endowments — still pay out more, she said, averaging 7 percent in 2005, 2 percent above the legal requirement.

Munson’s solution is twofold: to mandate that colleges make available statistics about their endowments and, if that does not produce results, to mandate a minimum payout, similar to that currently required of nonprofit organizations. “Possibly the most significant challenge for policy makers will be to make sure that any newly directed monies actually go toward aid or tuition reduction and don’t become part of a shell game,” she concluded.


... Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) asked explicitly why, given high compounded growth over two decades, “are we allowing our endowments to remain tax-free?”

The other panelist who spoke on the issue, Jane G. Gravelle, a senior specialist in economic policy at the Congressional Research Service, noted that educational endowments totaled at least $340 billion last year, with an overall return of 15.3 percent, or $52 billion — “earnings that are generally tax-exempt.”'...

'...Florida State dropped from 110th on the overall [US News and World Report] list to 112th. USF stayed in the third tier - which includes schools ranked below 125th - which is disappointing considering the university's potential and its location in a dynamic, growing region.

Surely we're better than 125th - aren't we?

University of Central Florida joined USF in the third tier, which showed progress since it had been in the fourth tier.

But with all due respect to UCF's efforts, the state's showing in U.S. News' rankings was pathetic. Florida, after all, is the fourth largest state in the nation.'

'[I]t was a student-athlete who came forward in March with concerns of possible misconduct.

The investigation revealed that, without the knowledge of one student-athlete, the learning specialist provided answers to an online quiz to a second student-athlete and told him to submit those answers on behalf of the first.

The second student-athlete told investigators he wouldn't have felt comfortable refusing the learning specialist because of "who she was," his "great relationship" with her and his trust in her. Five days after the incident, on March 28, he reported to his academic adviser what had happened. In short order, Wetherell was told and he ordered an investigation.


...While the report doesn't name the learning specialist, who was placed on administrative leave on April3 and resigned her position effective July5, school personnel records show that Brenda H. Monk, Ph.D., sent a one-sentence note to director of academic support Mark Meleney that she was "leaving my position" on that date.'

'Each of the student-athletes was enrolled in the same online course.

"These are the facts and they are undisputed at this time," Wetherell said. "You could make a pretty good case that the faculty did not do a very good job of protecting the integrity of the test."' [More strong words from the president. UD'd be really surprised if the professor running the course didn't know about the cheating. UD assumes the course was created for purposes of cheating.]

'A consulting firm that has its roots in NCAA enforcement will help FSU deliver [its] message [to the NCAA].' [What message? The message that FSU shouldn't really be penalized because after all someone came forward, and the school investigated right away, etc. The consulting firm will charge FSU, which has its ass in a sling and isn't in a position to complain, a whole lot for this work, but I doubt there's anyone in Florida who minds this use being made of their tuition and tax dollars. It's sports, after all.]

'On the morning this week when the Rutgers football team reached No. 10 in the national rankings, Prof. William C. Dowling retreated four centuries to a favorite poem. It was John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” the day’s topic in English 219, an introductory course in lyric literature. Dr. Dowling had set aside all 80 minutes for plumbing Donne’s 36 lines.

Coaxing, chiding, prodding, provoking, he led two dozen students through the thicket of archaic language and elusive imagery on the search for meaning...

...Dr. Dowling has stood as an idealistic absolutist, an intellectual convinced that the thunder of big-time athletics [is] crumbling the ivory tower of academe.

...[In] the bread-and-circuses department, the number of undergraduate applications has risen along with Rutgers’s sporting fortunes, as have annual donations to the university. Of course, some of the recent crop of students distinguished themselves recently by shouting obscenities at the Navy football team as it was being trounced by Rutgers a few weeks ago. [Bit sloppy for the NYT -- repetition of recent/recently in same sentence...]

Such an episode is a vivid reminder that given the tawdry history of corruption and compromise at Division I-A schools, something will happen soon enough either at Rutgers or somewhere else to make the critique in “Confessions of a Spoilsport,” [Dowling's just-released attack on major university sports] into prophecy.

...A self-proclaimed “academic traditionalist” who doesn’t drive and still thinks Bob Dylan betrayed folk music by going electric..."'

'The senior Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee plans to expand an investigation into the tax-exempt status of college sports, reopening a debate about whether donors should receive a tax deduction for contributing to athletics departments.

In an interview on Tuesday, an aide to Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the senator plans to question the Internal Revenue Service about the tax status of booster clubs and athletics programs and "what gives the IRS comfort that they have met the requirements of being a charity."

The fresh concerns came in response to a Chronicle article suggesting that contributions to sports programs are eating up an ever-larger share of donations to colleges, and that some athletics programs entice donors with perquisites like free seats on charter flights ...

"When I hear stories about top donors to college athletic programs getting a free seat on the team plane," Mr. Grassley said in a written statement, "I wonder what the public gets out of that. We need to make sure that taxpayer subsidies for college athletic-program donations benefit the public at large."


... Today the Finance Committee will turn its attention to another concern it has on college campuses: whether university endowments deserve tax breaks. Mr. Grassley has his reservations on that matter, too.

"Since tax breaks for charitable donations are supposed to contribute to the public good," he said, "it's fair to ask whether the tax breaks that lead to big university endowments are serving the public."'

"Uplifting - to me, at least.
Rude - but bang-on."

---the hoya, georgetown university student newspaper---

Labels: SOS

'JJ: New York magazine has a profile this week of Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, and they call him "America's Most Influential Journalist." What have bloggers like Drudge done to journalism, and how do you think it compares to the muckrakers that you came of age with?


SH: There is an enormous change taking place in this country in journalism. And it is online. We are eventually -- and I hate to tell this to The New York Times or the Washington Post -- we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular. And they are really going to cut into daily journalism.

I've been working for The New Yorker ... since '93. In the beginning, not that long ago, when I had a big story you made a good effort to get the Associated Press and UPI and The New York Times to write little stories about what you are writing about. Couldn't care less now. It doesn't matter, because I'll write a story, and The New Yorker will get hundreds of thousands, if not many more, of hits in the next day. Once it's online, we just get flooded.

So, we have a vibrant, new way of communicating in America. We haven't come to terms with it. I don't think much of a lot of the stuff that is out there. But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.'

...'Among the surveyed institutions [in a recent study of a group of institutions], athletics departments brought in an increasing share of the colleges' overall donations. In 1998 athletics gifts accounted for 14.7 percent of overall gifts. By 2003 sports donations had reached 26 percent.

The shift has frayed relations among fund raisers soliciting the same donors and has led to broader concerns about the growing importance of sports as overall funding for colleges has stagnated.

"There's a fear among faculty members that there is a discrete amount of money that alums and non-alums are willing to commit," says Dennis R. Howard, a professor of business at the University of Oregon and co-author of the article in the sports-management journal. "And the more the athletic program gets, the less there is to support the academic programs."

...Seat-license fees, which have climbed to as much as $2,500 with the demand for tickets, have led some donors to cut back their contributions to other parts of the college, says Jeffrey L. Stinson, an assistant professor of marketing at North Dakota State University, who has studied the effect of athletics fund raising on total giving to colleges.

"We don't necessarily see a decrease on a dollar-for-dollar basis," he says. "But you do see donors cut back a little on that academic gift because they just don't have the capacity." ...'

'LEGAL WOES BEGIN TO TARNISH UT's REPUTATION [Begin? Tarnish? The reporter needs to get out of Texas.]


There have been dark days for coach Mack Brown at Texas, but rarely have they coincided with a 4-0 start and top-10 national ranking. [Again, big ol' Texas hankies come out right away for the person who did the recruiting.]

These days, it's not the close calls against Arkansas State or Central Florida that trouble Brown. [Wasn't anyone troubled by Brown's attraction to criminals when he was forming his team?]

It's the seemingly never-ending wave of off-field legal problems that has brought more pressure than an Oklahoma pass rush the past few months. A string of arrests and suspensions has made the Longhorns a national punch line befitting an opening dialogue for Jay Leno and David Letterman.

What do you call a drug ring in Austin? A huddle.

The Longhorns have adopted a new "honor system." Yes, your honor. No, your honor.

Four UT football players are riding in a car, who's driving? The police.

Mack Brown should not have hired a new defensive coordinator this offseason. He should have hired a defense attorney.

Even the familiar Hook 'Em Horns slogan has been replaced by Book 'Em Horns from rival schools.

Texas officials are not amused.

"We need to fix it and keep it fixed," UT men's athletic director DeLoss Dodds said. "We will survive and come through this." [Tough guy.... Or Blanche Dubois? You make the call.]

Since June, six UT football players have been arrested on charges ranging from driving while intoxicated to drug possession to aggravated robbery to tampering with evidence.

Brown, in his 10th season at Texas, has acted swiftly and sternly. [Blatant damage control for local consumption. Reporter has no shame.] One player (safety Robert Joseph) has been kicked off the team and three others are suspended indefinitely pending the legal process.

"I've dealt with more in six months than I've dealt with really in about 23 years," Brown said. "Especially more than in the 10 (years) here." [Sob. Why me?]

The latest arrest came last Monday when James Henry, a freshman running back, was arrested on third-degree felony charges of beating up a victim and tampering with physical evidence in connection with a July 27 robbery allegedly involving two other football players — Joseph and defensive tackle Andre Jones. [Teamwork.]


A Hard Town and State

Henry's arrest came on the same day Brown chided coverage of the school's legal run-ins, saying "Austin is as hard on people and this state's as hard on kids as I've ever seen." [Not sure what these two sentences are trying to say.]

Brown, who led the Longhorns to a national title during the 2005 season, has taken a tough stance with a zero tolerance policy.

Sophomore linebacker Sergio Kindle and junior defensive end Henry Melton were suspended for the first three games of the season for their DWI arrests, the harshest penalties handed down by Brown since arriving in 1998.

Last season, Brown suspended starting cornerback Tarell Brown for the Longhorns' showdown with top-ranked Ohio State after he was charged with misdemeanor drug possession and unlawful gun possession. The drug charge against Brown was dropped.

Another player, running back Ramonce Taylor, was charged with possession of marijuana prior to last season and sentenced to 60 days in jail. He transferred to Texas College, where he was academically ineligible. He was not selected in April's NFL draft.

"Young people who do not obey the law, university or team rules will continue to be disciplined with a stern hand and we will move forward," Brown said. "We continue to have a zero tolerance policy in that regard." [If I were a Texas student, I'd wonder whether the best use of my athletic fee is the recruitment of criminals and then the suspension of same. How about not recruiting them?... The university's playing a high-stakes, cynical game: It knows it's recruiting bad guys, but figures maybe it can control most of them long enough to get a championship out of them. Probabilities being what they are, the university is losing this game. The rush of events reveals UT as a university that doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground.]

The UT administration has solidly supported Brown, who received a two-year contract extension and sizable raise in late August that makes him among the nation's five highest-paid football coaches. Dodds repeatedly has praised Brown for his handling of the program, and UT president William Powers Jr. offered a show of support last week. [Guys. Guys are pretty bizarre. A coach whose mismanagement of his job has been so flagrant as to make his university a national laughingstock gets the total adoring backing of his university. UD awaits UT's announcement of his million dollar bonus.]



Coach is Devastated [Hankies now sopping wet at the thought of this fine man dragged through the mud because of the way he recruits football players.]


Those close to Brown said he has been "devastated" by the off-field problems and how it has stained the program's reputation. [When all else fails, get girly.] After the latest arrest, Brown took full responsibility and said "it's all on me."

"What I've got to do is just go back and look at me, and not point fingers, not make excuses but put it solely on my shoulders," Brown said. "I am responsible for everything we do, and I want to make sure the University of Texas is getting what they're paying for and right now I've got to do a better job."

In 20 years as coach from 1957-76, legendary UT coach Darrell Royal said he dealt with his share of problems, but nothing compared to the current Longhorns. Although it was a different era and different kids, Royal said the message remains the same.

"I eliminated some of them, just told them to move out of the dorm and their scholarship wasn't any good anymore. That makes it damn serious to the rest of them that are there," he said. "I could do things they can't do now. They'd like to, but they can't. It's against the rules." [Well, but what they can still do is refuse to recruit shits.]

What can the Longhorns do to prevent such incidents? Presently, freshmen and sophomores are required to live in on-campus dormitories. Those upperclassmen requesting to live off campus must receive permission from everyone from the coaching staff to the athletic department's academ