… the scummy world of big-time Southern football keeps rolling along. For years and years she’s followed the beautiful, profoundly rooted culture of obscenely overpaid coaches cheating their way to championships that get rescinded when some filthy traitor on the staff spills the beans. Then there’s the old-timey defamation lawsuit the fired coach files, in which he demands a billion dollar settlement cuz of all the damage the school has done to his beautiful reputation. There’s the charming buzz that ensues among the faithful: Who among the equally scummy cheater-coaches out there will be the dumped cheater-coach’s replacement? And everybody cheats, so why were we singled out? There’s the sweet perennial controversy about whether tailgate parties which turn the campus into a urinic heap where drunk out of their minds pre-teens reel about should be subject to a few rules, and the equally perennial controversy about the advisability of a university holding courses during the same week important football game are played (answer: scheduled classes are inadvisable). There’s the inexhaustible thrill of watching this or that heavily-recruited player with a notoriously violent past assault people all over town, as well as the larger traditional spectacle of groups of bulked up football heroes making use of monster SUVs, monster rifles, and illicit drugs all at the same time. The fraternities make their own venerable contribution to the Southern football landscape, killing pledges during fan parties through the time-tested method of alcohol and neglect.

The University of Tennessee is the scummy football school du jour; but places like Ole Miss, which combine all aspects of this culture with campus white supremacy riots, are real – uh – historic.

And yet at the same time what could be more totally up to date than white supremacy rioting?

… in the Capitol building with a bunch of sick losers? Even at his lowest, when he was living in his car, Klete Keller was never a loser, never sick. He was, by his own account (listen up – it’s a half hour long but worth the investment of time), an entitled jerk, a man who thought being an Olympian meant he could keep swimming swiftly and easily through post-Olympic life.

Life had other ideas, and, when Keller realized basically nobody besides a few swim team kids gave a shit that he was a champion swimmer, he got depressed and angry and stopped working (or was fired) and started drinking and lazing about. His wife threw him out and he spent extended time homeless and altogether down and out.

One of Keller’s former Olympic teammates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss Keller’s apparent descent, drew a line from the “goofy, oafish” swimmer he knew in the 2000s to the aimless, rudderless, 30-something man who, he speculated, became a perfect candidate to fall into a radical, conservative rabbit hole of conspiracy theorists and rioters involved in insurrection.

His sister eventually let him move in with her, and that’s when things started looking up for him.

Until a few days ago, he had a steady job in a real estate firm in Colorado; he might well have lost that job now. His name has been erased from the firm’s website. He faces possible arrest.

We needn’t waste time accounting for Keller’s big enthusiasm for Fuckface – that is apparently well documented in his (now-erased) social media. Anyone who wants to can be enthusiastic about Ff. But it’s certainly worth considering the fanaticism that brought him from Colorado to DC to the violence at the Capitol.

Having listened to him tell his story, I’ll offer this idea, sketchy and ill-informed as it has to be.

As I listened to Keller tell his tale, the phrase drama junkie kept coming to me. Also adrenalin junkie. After years and years of intense unrelenting swimming – in competitions, in practices – Keller had clearly built up a strong need for everything in life to be an unrelenting competitive test of his endurance in dramatic contests. He makes it clear that once his swimming career was over he entirely totally thoroughly collapsed. Ordinary vague daily life failed to be commensurate with the extraordinary small sharp warrior focus of the swimming pool. But Keller’s need for battle, self-testing, winning, superiority persisted.

Now this is a guy who dropped out of college – to focus on swimming, natch. One option as he left swimming would have been to finish his University of Southern California degree and get, like, a marketable skill. But he was, by his own admission, too arrogant for that. So down, down, down, he went. [Correction: According to this, he did eventually finish his degree.]

So my old friend Courtney, a really impressive all-around athlete, once sent me an article about the connection between athleticism and self-destructive behaviors. Here’s an excerpt from it:

If you’re an outdoor athlete and you’re good at it, you’re probably like I once was: a selfish, self-involved son of a bitch. It’s always more, more, more and me, me, me, and I was no different. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to do the hardest sport routes, to be the boldest on high, killer walls.

Why? Why not? I was addicted to climbing, and then to starvation, and when that wasn’t enough, I became addicted to drugs.

Maybe you see some of my method in your own madness. And perhaps your obsessions are “healthy”: wheatgrass, long runs, body sculpting, rock climbing. That’s great. But I tell you now, absent your passions you will feel the sharp scrape of withdrawal — just like any fixless junkie bug-eyed in a January alley. Reality can be reduced, at its sparest, to chemical reactions, our body craving the release of GABA, oxytocins, endorphins, serotonin, dopamine. It doesn’t care about their provenance. It just doesn’t. Cut off the source—any source—and you will pay.

The drama, injury, contests, even in some perverted sense the teamwork at the Capitol must have felt very familiar to poor Klete Keller, once a champion, then a loser, then a winner, and now at this late date once again a terrible loser. Turns out – maybe; I’m speculating – he never quite lost his addiction to bloody battle. And now he has drowned in it.

PGA will Strip Trump Bedminster of 2022 PGA Championship

“[A]ny affiliation is poisonous.”

The little world of Edinburg High runs smack into reality, as its coach is put on probation, its star football player (who assaulted a ref and was carted off to jail in front of thousands – millions – now that the incident has gone viral) is out for the rest of the year, and all of its sports programs are also on probation.

The football players gathered in front of the high school right after the assault and petitioned to return to the field asap. They must be really shocked at the severity of the punishment.

But life is for learning. There’s a big world out there – there’s not just the little world of Edinburg where smashing a game official cuz you’re pissed is a little embarrassing but no reason to halt the game or subsequent games. In the big world, the global revelation of criminals on your team is no small matter.

Once an obscure school, Edinburg now captures the world’s attention with its football program’s amazing, award-winning defensive end, who … well, the thing that caught the world’s eye was his vicious attack on a referee who did something he didn’t like. But let’s roll the whole tape.

Edinburg High senior defensive end Emmanuel Duron, the team’s star defender, was flagged on a play early during the second quarter after he shoved an opposing offensive lineman to the ground and attempted to make a tackle on PSJA High freshman quarterback Jaime Lopez after the whistle had blown the play dead.

Duron and referee Fred Gracia exchanged words after the play was over, and Gracia ejected Duron from the contest after back-to-back unsportsmanlike penalties on the same play.

Duron, who was leading the Bobcats in tackles (102) and sacks (eight) through four games, then charged onto the field as teammates raced after him in an attempt to hold him back. The senior defensive end collided with Gracia, checking him chest-to-chest at full speed and sending him to the turf.

Duron was escorted out from the stadium by a team of four Edinburg police officers who were working security for the game. He was not handcuffed, but was removed from the premises and did not return.

… Duron was suspended for the remainder of the 2019-20 soccer season after a similar incident occurred during a match on the pitch last year against crosstown rival Edinburg Vela.

Duron was The Monitor’s All-Area Boys Wrestler of the Year last season.

You’ll note that I linked you to local coverage up there. Here’s Emmanuel Duron’s current Google News page. He and his school have really hit the big time.

I linked you to local stuff because in order to understand the sort of world that generates and lionizes notoriously violent eighteen year olds, you need to understand Texas. Everyone else headlines this story with words like violent, disgusting, shocking; the local press doesn’t even make reference to the assault.

Bittersweet: Bobcats beat

Bears for 6A playoff berth,

lose star defender

The most important thing, the headline thing, is that his team won; but the victory was “bittersweet” because they “lost” their “star defender.” No explanation of how they lost him.

First two paragraphs:

The Edinburg High Bobcats and PSJA High Bears met Thursday night at Richard R. Flores Stadium to play a win-or-go-home District 31-6A zone play-in game that started off with a frenetic pace.

But the moment was bittersweet for the Bobcats, who lost their best defensive player during a 35-21 victory over PSJA High to advance to the Class 6A Division I playoffs, after an ugly moment during the first half threatened to derail the entire game.

So the lead is that the game had a good fast pace, and that tragically one side’s best defensive player was “lost.” But they won anyway! The still unspecified event that prompted the loss almost derailed the game… And an assault on a ref followed by four police officers dragging the player from the field would certainly derail a game anywhere outside of Texas; but why not take advantage of the points your side made as a result of the unhinged physical attacks and the cheating of your most admired player?

Oh, the article goes on to recount the attack; but look at the whole thing. Almost all of it is taken up with fans’ excited accounts of the win.

This blog has long covered our most revered college football players – the crazed giants led by Richie Incognito. Duron is king of the Edinburg world and will soon be fought over by recruiters from all the big football universities. He will soon be king of the world.

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PS: I’m always astounded at the fragile sensibilities of sportswriters. These guys are blown away (“unreal,” one of them writes) when violence like this happens on the field. Someone needs to tell them that it’s routine. German soccer officials get bodyguards.

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UPDATE: The school has withdrawn altogether from the playoffs and has apologized profusely. It’s a start. But the district faces a world of pain. Litigation. The worst imaginable global publicity. Huge money awards. Plus questions as to why their Incognito-in-Training wasn’t removed from football, given that he’d already been removed from soccer. Did the school think a differently shaped ball would mean different behavior? The sports-mad folk of Texas have a great deal to answer for, in so many respects. This is merely the latest disgrace.

Another Update: “Duron was charged with assault in Edinburg Municipal Court, a class A misdemeanor. If convicted, the charge is punishable by up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000.” That’s the least of his and his school’s problems. Because of the global attention to the case if nothing else (and he may have prior arrests/convictions), he’s liable to get some jail time; the school district may face an expensive lawsuit. It seems especially damaging and unfortunate for the particular school (coach, principal) that Duron was allowed to keep playing. Brace yourself for lurid tales of his off-field violence from friends and teammates.

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Mugshot. Adorable I’ll fuck you up too motherfucker expression on the lad’s face.

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MORE: And here’s what the players – gathering, with LET US PLAY signs in their hands, for a protest in front of the administration building – don’t get. It seems obvious to them – and to a lot of other reasonable people – that collective punishment is unfair. THEY didn’t attack the game official.

But they are in fact a collective, and collectively they represent a school, a school district, a town, even a local culture. What happened on their football field was grotesque — so grotesque that it has captured the disgusted attention of significant parts of the world, not just America. Something is wrong with Edinburg High School, not just with the dude who socked the official. It knew full well it had a monstrous person on its teams, and it removed that person from soccer. But not from football. Why the hell not?

Let UD tell you why. Because football is already an incredibly violent sport (soccer’s violence is all about the audience, with fans in some countries routinely staging fascist rallies while the game proceeds), with enormous tolerance — nay, admiration — of violence. You can just hear the coach telling the principal (assuming the principal even bothered expressing hesitation to him about Duron) that the dude is admittedly too hot-headed for soccer, but football suits his temperament fine. You can hear the coach reminding the principal (and is it a factor that he’s a man and she’s a woman?) that he’s the most valuable player on the team, and they’ve got to get to the playoffs. “They’ve played their hearts out all season. He’s learned from the soccer punishment. I’ll take responsibility for his behavior.”

Football culture up and down the line is pretty fucking twisted; but high school kids! Texas! Ain’t my place out here on Coastal Elite Coast to tell football-crazed Texan towns how to live; but I can tell them that we’re all watching, and when their way of life produces Emmanuel Duron we’re judging everyone down there, not just Duron. Durons are enabled by groups of moral idiots who can’t see past the next field goal. If students at Edinburg High want to be angry, they should be angry with their coach, their principal, and their superintendent. Those are the people who make Durons happen.

With the shocked and appalled eyes of the world on their little school, Edinburg needed to acknowledge its twistedness, and needed to make a strong reformist statement. Sorry, kiddies.

Texas Tech must be seen to be believed. In this earlier post, UD surveyed the school’s long list of sadistic coaches – not to mention its bringing on board and giving all its money to luminaries like Alberto Gonzales and Tommy Tuberville – and concluded that something way kinky was going on there. It’s as if the place seeks after twisted people to hurt its students and its reputation.

Incredibly, this idea – that TTU actually recruits the sadistic as a kind of school policy – seems not so wild. For with all that sadomasochism behind it, TTU went and hired another one … or another two…

Twelve of the 21 women who played for Texas Tech since [Marlene] Stollings took over the program in 2018 have left, [citing player abuse]…. [Also, players accused] former strength and conditioning coach Ralph Petrella of berating and sexually harassing them … [Stollings has now also been fired.]

Luckily, assistant coach Nikita Lowry Dawkins is still there!

[One player reports she was] told by assistant coach Nikita Lowry Dawkins to snap a rubber band on her wrist when she had a negative thought.

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Plus you don’t have to be selected for a varsity team to get the shit beat out of you in Lubbock. Lubbock is one of America’s most violent cities. Just walk outside.

My headline comes from the comments section of an article about Washington State University’s projected (2022) athletics deficit of $102.7 million.

Ho hum.

Naturally, our attention at University Diaries has been riveted to WSU for years, and you can read why here – it’s a link to all of my posts about the dump.

WSU has been in profound athletics deficit for fucking ever, since it boasts a kind of Platonic perfection of sordid greedy litigious coaches, significant numbers of criminally violent players, corrupt administration, students who mostly don’t give a shit and don’t go to games and instead bitch about how their tuition increases go to the most disgusting man in the world (except for his revered Donald Trump), Mike Leach…

So blah bletch projectile vomit gag cough dry heave spew

It’s our beloved alma mater the one and only WSU

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UD thanks Seelye.

The pandemic has shut down all of UD‘s sports scandal fun; and, as this article suggests, big time university athletics might have a lot of trouble bouncing back when covid ends. Oh dear.

… this blog keeps its eye on its beloved University of Louisville, scummiest school in these United States. I mean, Louisville is only one of zillions of dirty jockshops awaiting its NCAA fate because it bribed players’ families or took money from commercial interests to steer players toward them or blahblahblah same old shit … This just in: Big time university sports is weawy weawy filfy doity… But when it comes to athletic as well as academic corruption, no one does it like Louisville.

And mes petites – Now that the American university has disappeared as an empirical-world phenomenon, the only happening place on campus is the basketball arena/football stadium, haunt of the heinous.

Well, he wouldn’t, would he. His total mismanagement (we’re being kind: it’s just as likely it was total deliberate rule-breaking) of his school’s sports programs has fucked Stephen F Austin University over but good. The school has rewarded him by putting him back in the classroom, where he can share with generations of students his … innovative sports management techniques.

Stephen F. Austin faces a series of penalties, including the vacating of games, for a lack of institutional control violation (Level I) involving the “erroneous certification” of 82 student-athletes in nine sports over the past decade, the NCAA announced Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the NCAA announced an eventual postseason ban for the school’s baseball, men’s basketball and football programs, all of which were included in Wednesday’s release, due to an insufficient Academic Progress Rate.

With the latest reprimand, the school must return 50% of revenue (more than $60,000) from the 2016 NCAA tournament, when the basketball program was led by current Illinois coach Brad Underwood, and vacate any games that included ineligible athletes. Other penalties include a 2.5% reduction in football scholarships and a 5% reduction in baseball scholarships — which can be assessed this season or next season — plus three years’ probation.

Such trivial stuff: You wouldn’t want any heads to fall because of it… No one’s fault, really, and McDermand doesn’t want to talk, so let it go…

… these two just got creamed.

From the outset, these two Varsity Blues parents passing their daughters off as rowers not only denied they did anything wrong; they truly believed… they knew… they did nothing wrong. That’s why they felt confident demanding that a judge throw out all the charges against them: How could anyone sustain charges when they did. nothing. wrong?

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UD likes to point out instances of true moral degeneracy when they occur. For these two people, being rich means you use your money to hurt less wealthy people, corrupt systems, and gain advantages. Everyone knows that, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s reality. While serving their jail terms, and then throughout their subsequent lives, these two will continue to believe this, though they are now willing to acknowledge that stinking legal systems exist under which this activity may actually be prosecuted.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy

Says College Football System is ‘Immoral’

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?