March 8th, 2024
For two months now, Greek soccer matches have been played in empty stadiums.

That’s because for decades Greek fans have been killing people and torching cities and all. The hapless government thinks a temporary pause and some more security cameras will bring Peace in Our Time, but this latest scheme will work out just as well as Chamberlain’s. I guess it’s real hard to confront the only thing to be done with a significant population of nihilist shits: No. More. Soccer.

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A BAD CROWD

Since that’s way rad an idea, let me say a bit more about pre-modern and postmodern crowds, and how they’re making crowds themselves obsolete.

The Greek football fans generate primitive, pre-modern crowding, all about atavistic drives among men. We had one of these recently in the States — the mass shooter at the Super Bowl victory parade was just, you know, hormones, spoiling for a fight.

Any scenario that surrounds fundamentally aggressive men with other young men will bring out the AK47 (that’s new — primitive cavemen had rocks), or, outside of gun-drenched USA, knives. And not just random young men: It was a signal cultural moment when the sixty year old owner of a soccer team got angry and ran onto the field during a game, with a gun in his outstretched hand to kill a referee.

You understand – yes? – the message Savvidis sent to all random hormoned-up young men? What I’m doing is a highly charismatic act.

You make matters worse when you present these people with established ‘enemies’ – opposing domestic or foreign teams. They don’t have to – like the Super Bowl shooter – go looking for enemies. You’ve set up a war for them to fight in, collectively, cuz they’re part of… a crowd.

And it’s an all-male, all-young crowd, right? Didn’t use to be, but over the years women children and older people have arrived at the conclusion that Greek soccer stadiums are not conducive to longevity, let alone a fun afternoon. So now you’ve concentrated the scariest element of society into loud sweaty excited rageful quarters.

So Greece is simply farther along in the evolution toward the end of crowds: It has watched for decades as its soccer matches – increasing numbers of them – devolve into fatal violence. It has tried everything, including, indeed, the end of crowds. The country is coming off of a two-month moratorium on soccer attendees.

But now that they’re letting these incredibly dangerous groups of people back in, what do they think is going to happen?

So, you know, we’re getting the stern announcements about enhancements of the police state they’ve already set up in the stadiums – vast numbers of security cameras, police, mandatory digital identification, weapon checks, blah blah.

Will it work? Keep your eye on Miami’s spring break. It’s happening right now. Those crowds are so awful that Miami released this ad a couple of weeks ago, and has made clear that it does in fact want the total end of those crowds. We don’t want you. Don’t come here. AND here are all the police state goodies we’re throwing at you if you come anyway. Let’s see if it works. Might make the guys madder, you know.

Anyway, so Greece. So what was once supposed to be A GAME, a certain thing, a sports gathering, is now – you understand? – a kind of lord of the flies free for all held perilously in check by insane levels of surveillance technology plus a very large, very frightened, security force. The players are scared, and not just the ones dreading racist chants. The referees? Forget about it. You know that groups of them have gone on strike because of the attacks.

So my thing is who’s kidding who. Eventually it won’t just be Savvidis packing heat. Obvious escalations of an already lurid situation are on their way, and we know from security’s inability to stop a mass shooting at the Super Bowl parade that guns are too quick and easy and lethal to police.

Think security will find weapons and confiscate them? Haha. Check out how many smuggled guns are discovered every day at all of America’s airports. People are always trying, and think about how many guns the TSA isn’t finding.

When crowds become impossible, what are your choices? You can try identifying and excluding the evil doers, but you’ll never get them all, and of course they’re evil enough to figure out how to get into the stadium no matter what you do. You can get to North Korean levels of police state apparatus, I guess (lines of soldiers with guns pointed at the crowd throughout? torture chambers below the locker rooms?), but this won’t be very… pretty. No, UD is thinking that Greece (and other countries) will have to shut down the whole thing.

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Our highly advanced postmodern crowds are a whole other thing. It’s their innocence that gets you. They are sitting ducks, awaiting the Las Vegas shooter, the Prague shooter, the Highland Park shooter. They are gathered to enjoy a concert, a parade, or just a sunny afternoon on the campus of Charles University. Massive, extensive, the highest of high-tech firepower rains down upon them from a heavily fortified genius who has thought everything out to guarantee he’ll be able to shoot for a long time and kill a lot of people.

I don’t think American parades or outdoor concerts have a very long shelf life either.

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Oh, and on the subject of Greek violence — We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the petrol bombs being thrown at police, even as we speak, in opposition to the government’s shocking intention to allow private universities to operate freely in Greece.

Yes! What’ll they think of next? Private, as well as, public universities!

Most Greeks are in favor; over 40,000 of the smartest young Greeks currently study abroad, having fled the squalid corrupt national system. (Put Greece university in my search engine.) Competition might wake up the dead public campuses and reverse the brain drain, but who would want to do that?

March 6th, 2024
LIMERICK

It’s obvious why Ancelloti

Along with the other lads –  thought he

Could simply relax

And cheat on his tax.

The big football leagues are that grotty.

February 28th, 2024
From a low ranking of 176 in 2018…

… to an appalling 216 today, Texas Tech got there the traditional southern way: Appoint political hacks to run the place; make athletics everything, with its full complement of disgusting fans, sadistic/litigious/mentally retarded coaches, corrupt boosters etc etc etc; make sure everyone on campus is fully armed.

And fully drunk. In a typical day in basketball, Texas Tech fans threw water bottles and lots of other shit on the court cuz they were losing.

To round out your reasons to attend this school, Lubbock is one of the most dangerous cities in Texas.

February 3rd, 2024
One of the scummiest university basketball programs in America just treated us to an astounding act of on-court violence.

New Mexico State (feast your eyes) puts a guy on court who just goes ahead and punches the lights out of another player.

New Mexico State’s Robert Carpenter pulled back his arm and delivered a powerful punch to the face of Liberty’s Shiloh Robinson, sending the forward to the floor, [breaking his nose,] and leading to an ejection during an Aggies overtime win.

The beauty of it is the coach initially said Carpenter’s a great guy and I’m sure he’s remorseful and maybe we’ll suspend him for a game or something… And then I dunno someone must have talked to the coach cuz now it’s oh he’s suspended indefinitely blah blah.

January 30th, 2024
‘Athletics have contributed heavily to UA’s deficit.’

Wotta shocker.

[T]he athletics department at the University of Arizona is on track to lose approximately $65 million over two years.

… [T]he UA athletic department is operating at a roughly $30 million loss this year. Last year, the department lost about $35 million.

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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

December 14th, 2023
Christian thinks the Republican party chair is like…

… a football coach.

December 14th, 2023
‘[Draymond] Green is 33 with four championship rings and has signed his name on two $100 million contracts. No punishment is going to make him change his ways. He received the second contract after punching a teammate… The millennial NBA bully has bought all the way into his role and has no incentive to change. If Green wasn’t kicking, stomping, choking and swinging, he would not have been in that In-Season Tournament commercial.’

I say give the guy a gun out there! America! Fuck the Euros! Fuck yeah!

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BREAKING: The guessing game is over: Draymond Green will be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate.

December 12th, 2023
Last year’s winner of the Fair Play/Good Sportsmanship President/Executive Award by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF):

Yesterday, Faruk ran onto the field and punched a ref so hard the guy had to be helped up off the ground. Faruk has now been arrested. SO…

Things are getting so much better in world soccer! The last time a team owner ran onto the field and attacked a ref, he did it with a gun!

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photo credit: superlig

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Update: LOLOLOLOLOL

My aim was to react verbally to the referee and spit in his face. At this time, I slapped the referee in the face. The slap I gave did not cause a fracture. [The ref’s cheek was fractured.] After the slap I gave, the referee stood for about 5-10 seconds, then threw himself on the ground.  They immediately removed me from the scene because of my heart disease. Other than that, I am not aware of any incident that took place.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Because of my heart disease, I hereby resign from the club and place myself in jail for assault.

December 8th, 2023
“The September 11 attacks were the greatest work of art in the cosmos…compared to that, we composers are nothing.”

Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.

[In a recent coaching session with the team, Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott] cited the [9/11] hijackers as a group of people who were all able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection. One by one, McDermott started asking specific players in the room questions: …“What tactics do you think they used to come together? … What do you think their biggest obstacle was?” 

November 15th, 2023
‘[Texas] A&M’s Board of Regents, in a clandestine meeting, approved the firing of [football coach] Jimbo Fisher and the buyout payment in his contract of $75 million. [There’s] no discount if he decides to take another job. They are such morons down there.’

If you read this blog, you’ve known for years and years that down them parts thems all be morons. If you’ve been reading the Star Tribune, you think this is actually news.

November 6th, 2023
‘Two former New Mexico State basketball players and a student manager filed a lawsuit Monday saying their teammates frequently brought guns into the locker room where they sexually assaulted players as a way of ensuring everyone on the team remained “humble.”‘

When wee UD studied at the Medill School of Journalism, we often discussed the qualities of a good lead sentence; in particular, you want to pack a lot of information in without creating a run-on feel to the thing.

The AP writer who had to pack all of the repulsive behavior at New Mexico State into her lead had quite a task, but she acquitted herself well, finding a place in one sentence for the guns thing AND the cock-grabbing thing. Actual shooters (of guns) among team members appear a little farther down in the article. When there’s this much material, you have to be selective.

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For the venerable history of this institution, go here.

October 22nd, 2023
Nuremberg Envy

Note empty stadium.

Hitler sold far more tickets.

October 18th, 2023
Compelling Public Value, Texas Style

A Texas school district is considering the use of eminent domain to seize a man’s longtime home and make way for parking at a new $50 million [high school] football stadium… The land has been in [79 year old retired carpenter Travis] Upchurch’s family since 1916, when his relatives emigrated from Sweden and settled in Aldine as dairy farmers…

Upchurch’s family has said it is willing to sell the property to the district after Upchurch dies or at least work out an arrangement that would allow him to continue living there. His daughter, Tara Upchurch, told Houston-area outlet KHOU-TV that her father’s health has deteriorated as a result of stress… “I ask that you spare my father from this unnecessary upheaval.”

Aldine ISD has made multiple offers to purchase the land in recent months, both before and after trustees authorized the use of eminent domain … Under eminent domain, the government can acquire land for public use as long as it pays the owner a fair price.

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For what profiteth a fifth-generation elderly Texan who wants to die at home compared to the compelling public value of a high school football parking lot?

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UPDATE: Ah fuck it.

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UD thanks a reader for the link.

September 28th, 2023
 ‘A $100 million [high school] stadium [in a district that already has a great stadium] should come as a shock only to those who haven’t been paying attention. It’s as Texas as Dr Pepper and the Alamo.’

‘As a non-native, I can’t relate. My high school football team held all its practices on an open field in New York’s Central Park.

At our team’s games, we didn’t sit in a massive stadium, but on old rickety bleachers. We never had a home game because we never had a home field.

But we excelled in book learning. Every one of my classmates was accepted by a college.

I know times have changed, but $100 million goes a long way in education.’

Oh shush. We all don’t need some New Yorker come down here tell us how to live like we should care we’re 35th among states in education blahblah. We’ll get that thing built and fuck you.

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UD thanks John, a reader, for the link.

September 27th, 2023
‘With LSU reportedly interested in [Mel] Tucker amid his 2021 [football coaching] success, the Spartans rewarded him with a massive contract extension. At the time, his annual salary trailed only Nick Saban’s at Alabama and put him in the company of other national title-winning coaches, such as Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher.’

Michigan State was happily on its way to bankrupting the school, via massive payments (an almost hundred million dollar ten-year contract extension!) to a football coach who racked up some winning games, when (quoting James Bond) “something big came up.”

Given that as recently as 2018 another Michigan school was out 500 mill because a team doctor also had something come up, you kinda wonder

1.) how does one of America’s not at all rich states keep finding all this dough (and more) in its university sports programs? and

2.) will the state ever realize that hugely expensive degenerates tend to populate American university sports programs at the highest levels? (Tuberville not high-profile enough for you?) Because once you get RID of, say, Tucker, he’s gonna turn around and sue you for hundreds of millions more, the way all of them do when you fire them, for cause or not. Right? Has anyone besides UD been following this history?

As daunting as the remaining two months remaining on the schedule appear, there’s also the potential for a lengthy legal fight with Tucker hinting at his intent to sue the university over the roughly $80 million remaining on his contract. Michigan State doesn’t want to pay a dime and will have to decide if it’s worth absorbing hefty legal fees and headlines continuing to link the school with Tucker or reach a settlement to bring the saga to an end.

3.) can anyone at these institutions of higher learning think about cause and effect? As in, when you suddenly give a hundred million dollar contract to a… not too upstanding person, might that money and power go to his head? Make him think he can get away with anything cuz he’s such hot shit?

Yeah. You kinda wonder why so many American universities are ineducable on the most basic patterns, the most basic matters.

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