Dropped out. At very outset of his professional career, fined $20,000 for a late hit. Arrested for trying to carry a Glock 19 onto a plane. The University of Alabama watches with excitement for Quinnen Williams’ next move!

… or DASPO, or, literally, a ban from any sports events, is the tragic event befalling little Sandro, head of the Naples Ultras, in an upcoming weepie for guys from Netflix. How does Sandro cope when “the values he once held dear begin to falter”? How does he begin to rebuild a life suddenly bereft of violent fascist spectacle?

What do you do when your very identity is stolen by punitive outside forces? How do you even begin to express yourself when your lifelong self-expression (making jungle noises when black players have the ball; calling Jewish players kikes) is silenced? Watch as Sandro struggles with his challenging new world. And keep the hankies ready.

Er, not quite. Readers will recall UD‘s extensive, and really kind of fun, coverage of the inimitable Philip Esformes (scroll down) and his BFF, U Penn HEAD basketball coach (datz right – not coaching staff, not booster, HEAD COACH) Jerome Allen, a man who used a position of high responsibility, visibility, and salary to pretend that Esformes’ pisher was actually a Penn basketball recruit in order to get the unskilled unbright cheater into Wharton. This was a version of the Varsity Blues deal, with a $250,000 bribe going directly into the hands of the man U Penn judged ethically appropriate to run its entire basketball operation.

Lots of sports writers are okay with Allen getting thrown out of the college game (Who cares. He now has a job in professional basketball, where taking only a quarter million bribe is a mark of serious inadequacy.), but they’re all huffy cuz Penn got some penalties too. After all, they just housed a moral degenerate… and the whole bribery thing didn’t fuck up their winning average or anything, so why, God, why?

... court.

They’re burning up the thesaurus over at Deutsche Welle, yet one feels they still have miles to go before they sleep.

Two headlines, one week, Jackson State University.

Oldest story in the book. Football factory knows a guy is off his rocker violent and the guy has a police record to prove it but the school admits him anyway because it loves him because that beautiful violence wins games.

Love is funny, or it’s sad
Or it’s quiet, or it’s mad
It’s a good thing, or it’s bad
But beautiful…
Beautiful to take a chance
And if you fall, you fall
And I’m thinkin’
I wouldn’t mind at all…
Love is tearful, or it’s gay
It’s a problem, or it’s play
It’s a heartache either way
But beautiful…
And I’m thinkin’ if you were mine
I’d never let you go
And that would be just beautiful I know

Mad and bad but beautiful on the field and who gives a fuck about the women who go to school there.

Because [huge] network money has to come from somewhere, we can anticipate more and longer commercials in games that already subject fans’ patience, bladders, and backsides to what amounts to a four-hour stress test. Those who head from the stadium to the local motel instead of fighting traffic and fatigue on the long drive home are almost certainly looking at two-night minimums on rooms at grossly inflated rates. Throw in gas, food, and tickets for a family of four, and your credit card tally will scream of a weekend in Paris, not Clemson.

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James Cobb, Spalding Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Georgia, goes on to describe

the sinister contagion of unadulterated commercialism now enveloping college football at every level. Left unchecked, it promises to make exiles of the students, alumni, and loyal fans in general who long saw games, not simply as athletic contests, but the centerpiece of a deeply personal, culturally affirming ritual.

*************

UD thanks Jim.

“Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez’: Former Pro Football Player Claims the NFL ‘Is in the Violence Business’ in Netflix Documentary”

LOL

***************

Sometimes it even looks as though the whole gig is up. Thank God for our very dumbest states.

Sports are games, but like virtually everything else in this culture, they’ve been transformed by capital into something deeply unfun. [Aaron] Hernandez left high school early to attend the University of Florida, where football is both religion and an industry… [A]n autopsy showed … that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative neurological condition the NFL doesn’t want you to think is the logical consequence of playing football… For his crimes, Hernandez went to prison, where he lost his life. The billionaires who pay men millions to damage their brains for television audiences? They’re the ones getting away with murder.

Life of the mind, USA.

On the college level, football players were not exempt from sexual assault allegations. Just look at what women suffered at Baylor University as a result of the “institutional failures at every level” under the leadership of Art Briles and then-school president Ken Starr (yeah, that Ken Starr.) One lawsuit alleged that 31 Baylor football players had committed 52 “acts of rape” between 2011 and 2014.

The university has settled several Title IX lawsuits with sexual assault survivors who accused officials of allowing a “rape culture” and failing to properly act against incidents of sexual assault. That included a Baylor volleyball player who alleged she was drugged and raped by at least four football players in 2012.

We’ve been talking about that forever on this blog; but while everyone else sees it as a problem, we see it as intellectual progress.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when Eastern Michigan University was arguably the most pathetic of America’s many pathetic football schools. But now. Now! Not only does their quarterback hit out so wildly at opposing players that he clocks the referee; another player gets ejected for spitting on an opponent.

Life of the mind, my beloved country. Life of the mind.