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Monday, March 12, 2007
Asleep at the Wheel Does the University of Tennessee Chattanooga exist? UD is more and more perplexed by the sorts of stories coming out of that place... if indeed there is a place... I mean, if there were a place, with people, wouldn't there be some response to its various scandals? The department of history there still boasts of the accomplishments of a professor who's both a diploma mill grad and a plagiarist. Professor Ruhlman graduated, the university tells us, from the American University of London... He's the author of a civil war book recently pulped because it was largely stolen from someone else's civil war book... And yet there he stays, in all his glory, a fully credited member of the university's history faculty.... And now there's the weird matter of the university's football program. It seems to be quite a shitty program, with poor attendance, and a bunch of locals who'd like to see it put to rest. Yet the coach has just given his son a football scholarship - mainly, it seems, to be able to spend a little more quality time with him: It surprises me that the signing of a head coach’s son to a football scholarship was not questioned by the local newspaper, Athletic Director Rick Hart, the university’s administration, or anyone else. This letter-writer makes my point: Where the hell is everybody? Nobody seems to have said or done anything. Though maybe this letter explains why: ...Sloan Allison probably won't make a living playing football and he might not even be a great college player. But this is about something much larger than football and UTC. It's about a father's love of his son and the opportunity to spend as much time with each other as possible. Sentimental folk down there... Family firsters... Who cares if he's no good... What's more important than father-son bonding? And if Tennesse's taxpayers can subsidize it, all the better... |