This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Monday, April 03, 2006

While the Duke Story's Cooling Its Heels,
There's Always Bad Writing to Keep Us Occupied


An opinion piece at College Sports TV, graded by an English professor.




DUKE LACROSSE SCANDAL WILL HAVE
AFFECTS [Effects] FELT FAR BEYOND DURHAM


Looking at the ramifications of the
Duke situation on Division I Lacrosse



As I mentioned in my column last week, I am not in a position to editorialize [about?] the legal ramifications of the Duke Lacrosse scandal. We will all have to wait until the facts circumvent [circumvent? Do you mean surface?] before we can really pass judgment. In the meantime, it is not fair to burry [bury?] any person, or group of people for that matter before the facts are revealed. After dissecting this situation (on the field), I would like to shed some light [you've gone from burial to dissection to illumination -- a rather awkward set of metaphors] on how this adversely affects the Division I season and Duke Lacrosse. I have come up with the following thoughts. [Drop this sentence.]

Scheduling

Is it fair to the opponents of Duke to have to continue with their season without knowing the permanent status of the team's (Duke) season? [Awkward sentence in terms of pronoun reference and redundancy.] Game planning and routines for teams is critical in a sport that has a season as short as lacrosse. If you are a coach that has a date scheduled with Duke this season, when will you find out the status of the game? Or, in the event the game is cancelled, how do you feel about having potentially fourteen days between games (many teams play Saturday games only at this point in the season [close parenthesis needed here] ? Some teams handle time off well, while others play their best ball when they are on the field as much as possible. I know if I coached a young team that had a date with Duke ["date with Duke" is good -- alliteration, etc.] , I would not be happy with the time off, as I would want my team with less experience to be able to play ball, and gain valuable game experience before playoff time. Many people have brought up the fact [you are referring to a claim, not a fact] that common opponents that Duke has had to cancel should schedule games against one another if they do not have scheduled date[s?] already. Negative. The NCAA ruled a few years back when teams would pick-up late season games with cupcake competition [cute] to pad (getting wins to become playoff eligible) its season record. Games are limited to begin with, and yes, one contest can make or break a season. Why should a team that had Duke on its schedule suffer?


C Pretty weak writing overall (see my parenthetical comments); and a major spelling error in a title is a real no-no.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

UPDATE: It's all been fixed! Editorial second thoughts or scathing online schoolmarm? Who knows...

Labels: