… and – look out – he’s at it again, stirring up hornets in Huntington. A local Marshall University basketball booster is outraged that Brozik, a professor there, made a student attend class.
Brozik … wouldn’t give Yous Mbao, a 7-foot-2 senior center on MU’s basketball team, an excused absence to play in the Herd’s 119-77 win over Rio Grande at the Henderson Center.
Had Mbao played, the win might have been 199-77!
[I]nformed sources say Brozik allegedly told Mbao his grade would be dropped two letters if he weren’t in attendance for a group presentation that Tuesday evening.
… What an injustice.
… If his name sounds familiar it’s because Brozik is the same professor that was outspoken in his criticism of Marshall’s financial support of the school’s athletic department. His rhetoric created a controversy and notable media attention.
The unfortunate part is when a few dissidents, such as Brozik, achieve notoriety while the silent majority of Marshall’s faculty is supportive of MU’s athletics.
The faculty at-large deserves better.
It’s also unfortunate that Marshall’s athletic department didn’t stand up to Brozik in Mbao’s behalf. It should have. It’s time to stop the nonsense.
(Yeah, ol’ Dallas outspoke for sure on Marshall University’s sports-fucked finances and general mental debility. We covered this notorious dissidence here.)
Marshall professors deserve to be at a university where coaches tell them when students can and cannot attend class. Why then do they not rise up as one and break their silence? Why should they get the short end of the stick, when professors at plenty of other schools have the right to plead with coaches for permission to have athletes attend class?
The athletics department itself fell down on this one, passively allowing a professor to apply attendance policies to athletes.
The article is clearly a call to arms. Expect professors and coaches to rally at Marshall’s central quad on behalf of their rights.
There’s an intriguing point/counterpoint in these two Eastern Echo articles dealing with the cosmic nullity that is the Eastern Michigan University football program. As the first student points out, when there’s no there there there’s every reason to stop pretending there’s a there. There.
Year in and year out, money continues to be wasted on a program in which virtually no one shows up to watch. … [There] are better things to do with the $2.47 million in the football budget instead of wasting it away with a sub-par product…
The writer calls for the university to shut down the program.
The other student argues that…
He doesn’t really argue. Even on the level of content, it’s hard to follow what he’s saying, since he doesn’t know what a semi-colon is. But his main point seems to be that the school has produced some NFL players.
Plus, some really impressive things are happening in the program. For instance, they just fired their crazed homophobic coach – and breaking his contract will only set the school back a few hundred thou. Oh, and
I would argue that wins and fans go hand-in-hand. If you want fans in the seats, you have to put some wins on the board.
Well, Coach English was trying to do that by calling everyone a faggot! What do you want?
Sure, some commenters point out that putting wins on the board actually doesn’t – at EMU – put fans in the seats. Like, I mean, really; (note semi-colon) no one at your school gives a shit about football…
Surely you didn’t think the emerging details of the Virginia State University attack (at a banquet) on an opposing team’s quarterback would make things look better? Not only does it seem to have been a planned, group assault against a totally unsuspecting single individual (he had left the luncheon to use the bathroom), but in its immediate aftermath, at a public event honoring various players and their conference, the two teams came close to an all-out melee.
And look. I can understand (see this post’s title) how distraught onlookers might tell reporters that it reflects badly on historically black universities; but, as a daily chronicler of American universities, I can assure you that this event, while certainly a step forward on our path toward the brutalization of institutions of higher learning, differs little from the hazing and rioting endemic on a whole bunch of campuses. Hazing, rioting, and, for sports factories like VSU, the games themselves brutalize our schools. In this particular case the opposing quarterback got his lights knocked out the day before the game, under dramatic circumstances; but of course he’s getting them knocked out, little by little, whenever he plays. A fine thing for universities – to be the means of delivering brain injury to their students.
Anyway. The comment thread on the article to which I’ve linked you is also instructive. Just as plenty of people think Richie Incognito did what needed to be done to toughen up a cowardly teammate, so a number of commenters don’t see the what the big deal is here. Why cancel the game just because our team got together and beat the shit out of the quarterback the day before? Use your second-string quarterback.
UD sometimes feels as though she should issue warnings:
WARNING: THIS UNIVERSITY IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH
U Mass Amherst, Chico State, University of Rhode Island: Certain schools feature violent people – often violent drunks – and should be avoided.
Virginia State, where only a few months ago two students were hazed to death, should definitely come with a warning. At a recent event celebrating its athletic conference, its football team beat an opposing quarterback so badly the game that had been scheduled for the day after the banquet has been called off.
The guy “was allegedly beaten by a group of Virginia State football players in a bathroom of a WSSU campus building during the CIAA football banquet.”
Winston-Salem State Chancellor Donald Reaves said in a statement Friday night, “I am saddened to report that at today’s CIAA pre-championship game luncheon held at the Anderson Center of the WSSU campus that our starting quarterback, Rudy Johnson, was viciously beaten by one or more members of the Virginia State football team.
“There is no excuse for the behavior of the Virginia State players. One suspect has admitted to his role in the attack and has been arrest on criminal assault charges. The University Police Department is attempting to identify the other VSU players who were involved. Today’s event was supposed to be a celebration for both teams and for all the players who were being recognized for an outstanding season. The actions from the Virginia State players certainly changed the outcome for everyone.”
Most teams wait until they’re on the field before beating the crap out of the quarterback. VSU can’t wait.
*********************
Wow. Yet more violence at Virginia State University.
Just sayin’! Not sayin’ Rule By Females would necessarily be better. But when you run a blog about universities and it’s all about undergraduates like Richie Incognito and trustees like Steven Cohen and coaches like Mike Rice you do wonder about Rule By Males.
When you see – frequently – headlines like this
WHY REPLACE A STADIUM THAT’S
ONLY HALF-FULL ON GAME DAYS?
it has to go through your head to consider whether men are led through life by anything other than dicks and wallets. I mean, why are Colorado State University and the University of Nevada Las Vegas (scroll down) going to build massive expensive empty new stadiums? CSU Athletic Director Jack Graham’s “dream of playing with the big boys,” says one local critic, really shouldn’t result in a university spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a slightly better located, slightly expanded, void.
Various fans explain to the newspaper that they go to the games, they get excited when they go to the games, and they get excited by the thought of competing with other schools on the basis of the magnificence of their stadiums …
It’s because of the intellectual luster he lends the place. Challenged on the pathetic graduation rates of the students for whose progress he’s responsible, he explains:
“If everybody stays, our graduation rate is great… But some guys just don’t stay. If somebody had an answer, I’d love to hear it.”
Boeheim earns close to two million dollars a year for his policy of saying
1. If they would graduate, they would graduate; and
2. Fuck if I know.
… where Richie Incognito spent two years as a university student.
Every powerhouse recruited him. His old man wanted him to go to Miami, but Junior felt at home during his visit to Nebraska. “I don’t want to go anyplace else,” he told his father. “There is nothing to do there. It’s just football.“
LOL.
************************
‘Course, they’re way past Incognito problems now.
************************
Oh, why be coy:
Incognito was suspended (twice) at Nebraska, and you know it’s not easy to get suspended at Nebraska, where character-building coach Tom Osborne let a cornerback play while awaiting trial for second-degree murder. Osborne also retained a defensive lineman who was arrested eight times, convicted four times, and left the heartland accused of multiple sexual assaults, before his induction into Nebraska’s Hall of Fame in 2006. Not to mention Nebraska’s current leader of young men, Bo Pelini, who is still apologizing for an epic carpet-bombing of F-words, an attempt to say exactly what he thought of Nebraska’s fans.
… The Incognito rap sheet includes a note that his peers voted him the NFL’s second-dirtiest player. No. 1 in a Sporting News poll last year was another Nebraska worthy, Ndamukong Suh.
************************
All of which confirms for the millionth time that if you want true surreality, the really actually deeply bizarre, you don’t go to America’s big cities. As David Lynch knows so well, if you seek America at its most scarily twisted, head for the rural heartland.
[Incognito’s drunken] assault [on a woman] at an annual team event happened in view of sponsors. [Head coach Joe] Philbin knew it happened yet continued to preach about the quality of the men in his locker room. He got rid of Chad Johnson after a domestic violence incident but kept Incognito after a sexual abuse incident.
The National Football Post on Friday reported Incognito called offensive line meetings at a strip club and fined players if they didn’t show up…
But the Dolphins allowed Incognito to be a member of the leadership council, which empowered him as a leader.
A coach, aware of the sexual assault and Incognito’s penchant for drinking and past drug use, overrides the player vote for leadership council. Philbin this week instead hid behind that vote, saying it was players, not him who made Incognito a team leader.
Look, the people within the Dolphins’ organization claiming complete ignorance of the apparent tension in Martin’s mind over Incognito and others are either lying – which makes them complicit – or out of touch, which makes them incompetent.
Either way, it is grounds for dismissal.
Some fans see what’s going on. And they’ve had enough. Fans have been writing to me and telling me they’re through with the franchise. Others say they’ll never buy a ticket again until major changes in leadership are enacted.
Consider that the Dolphins had 70,660 people at Sun Life Stadium for the season home opener. Then 68,342 for the second home game. Then 60,592 for the third home game. And 52,388 for the fourth home game.
Notice the trend?
Fans were abandoning this team in droves before the current scandal. You think any part of the last week is going to convince them to return?
The Dolphins failed to get public funding for upgrades to their stadium before this happened. Who’s going to vote to give them public money now, and what brilliant politician is going to champion the cause?
**********************
Though college and professional football detests – to the point of seeking and destroying it – any form of thinking, it might be time for the sport to do some reading in the extensive literature on disgust. (The New York Times provides a reading list of some recent works here.) If American football fails to understand the nature and effects of the stupendous revulsion it generates even in its fan base, it might not be able to save itself.
America’s wholesome, family-friendly tailgate culture claims another victim.
This blog regularly features tales from the tailgates. Just type tailgating in my search engine and scroll down.
My, my. The University of Nebraska. Don’t let your kid go to school there. Dangerous. Nebraska’s very keen on violent people. Will keep them on until they charge the school’s football coach.
When he wasn’t suited up, he was still getting into brawls — found guilty of misdemeanor assault in after “one of those parties in a Van Wilder movie” in February 2004, a former [Nebraska] student told The Post.
“I had to use the bathroom, and I knocked, and heard there were two people in there — and they weren’t happy I was knocking,” recalled the former student.
“I waited, and then suddenly, out comes Richie and his girlfriend. He was irate.”
Eventually, Incognito, like an uncaged beast, “tried to pin me on the bed,” as Cornhusker pals joined in, he continued. “I felt something hit me on the side of my face and my head went into a wall — it was Richie taking a cheap shot. “At that point he was threatening to kill me.”
The 6-foot-3, 320-pound lineman — who was punching holes in the walls when he couldn’t find a chin — finally left the party, but not before cold-cocking a poor sap who happened to be standing by the door. “He took his cell phone, threw it, and then punched him on his way out,” the former student said.
Incognito was set to play his junior year for new coach Bill Callahan, but was unceremoniously suspended from the nationally ranked squad, a move thought to be precipitated by the February brawl.
The Daily Nebraskan, the school newspaper, applauded the news…
“He was one of the worst people I ever interacted with,” [a student] told The Post. “It was just so extreme and unrelenting. There was no sense that he learned from anything when he got in trouble.”
[The student] said he nearly came to blows with Incognito …
“We were both in line at Wendy’s and he was standing over me . . . staring at me, ” he recalled. “He eventually just grunted and walked away.”
Officially, Callahan said at the time, “We have team rules. They’re very simple to follow. If they’re not followed, and they’re not complied to, then (you) suffer the consequences, unfortunately.”
But a former student told The Post the reason he heard from “inside the locker room” was that Incognito “tried to charge Bill Callahan.”
Callahan could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, the Incognito family made excuses for their son.
“Richie won’t take crap from anyone. He’s a hard-nosed kid, and Nebraska doesn’t want hard-nosed kids anymore,” his father told the Lincoln Journal Star.
**************************************
The article ends with an extremely weird statement from one of Incognito’s friends.
“He got kicked out of two universities. Guys like that don’t make it in the NFL. They usually float off to oblivion.”
Uh, getting kicked out of a university – or, more typically, flunking out – is the royal road to the NFL. Don’t know what this guy is thinking.
How important is this sport — about whose head-shattering vileness everyone, post-Incognito, is talking — to our universities?
The New York Times reviews the Incognito years – the glory years – at the University of Nebraska and the University of Oregon.
After a whistle at one [Nebraska] practice … he was accused of hitting a backup lineman, Jack Limbaugh. “He did that kind of thing to a lot of his teammates,” Limbaugh said. “I just walked off the field. A fight is what he wanted, but I wasn’t going there.”
Incognito was suspended for fighting in practice during 2003, and Nebraska sent him to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan., which treats psychiatric and behavioral problems. He was reinstated and was named an All-Big 12 Conference All-Star. But before the 2004 season, Incognito was found guilty of a misdemeanor assault charge. He was still on the roster until he fought a teammate in the locker room that summer. The new Nebraska coach, Bill Callahan, dismissed him.
He was quickly accepted into Oregon as long as he sought anger management therapy.
Incognito’s stay was less than two weeks, not long enough to even participate in a full practice. He never registered for any courses, according to the registrar’s office.
From an article written during his time at Nebraska:
“I don’t ever want to reduce anybody’s aggressiveness, ” [said] Barney Cotton, Nebraska’s new offensive line coach…
… Incognito is considered the brightest young star on the offensive line and has been mentioned in the same breath as former All-Americans such as Dominic Raiola…
Oh yeah RAIOLA!
Remember the Lions’ Dominic Raiola, another Nebraska offensive lineman by the way, verbally attacking the University of Wisconsin marching band before Detroit’s game in Green Bay earlier this season?
Ohio University currently enjoys the coach responsible for Raiola and Incognito – Frank Solich – and does it ever enjoy him!
Nothing sends a message of discipline to a college football team quite like its coach being passed out, drunk, at the wheel of a car pointed the wrong way on a one-way street.
Yes, that was ol’ Frank just a few years ago…
Incognito, Raiola, Solich…
Cornhuskers must be mighty proud! We need more of their All-American heartland values out here in cynical Washington DC.
[Football has] become the major theater of American masculine crackup…
[It] would be really good, it would be a really good thing, if the NFL moved its boundaries in such a way as to show some minimal respect for mental health.
… [W]hen a player says he needs time off for mental reasons — … in a sport with a suicide problem — it shouldn’t spark a national conversation on whether he’s soft.
You don’t think it’s true of college too? Read this post, and click on all the links.
******************
UD thanks Timothy.
It’s truly fascinating to UD that the psychosis at the heart of university and professional football is now, thanks to Richie Incognito, openly discussed.
“Three teams [and two universities, Nebraska and Oregon] employed Richie Incognito… His ability to play to the edge of lawlessness is valued… He is a valued commodity in the NFL…”
***********************
The NFL generates billions of revenue dollars selling violence. Players are hired to perform acts of mayhem on the field. Such a profession attracts some menacing individuals with checkered citizenship records.
Former NFL coach Jerry Glanville talked about needing “borderline trained killers” on his team. In other words, he needed some Richie Incognitos to compete.
Commissioner Roger Goodell spends a lot of his time suspending players for various misdeeds, but that is just the PR side of the industry. He keeps the corporate sponsors happy by pretending to keep his work force wholesome.
His people will work overtime sanitizing the Miami situation. Look for the league to roll out extensive anti-hazing guidelines.
But the NFL will never change the essence of the sport and endanger the bottom line.
**********************
[The] NFL was fine with Richie Incognito’s insanity as long as he didn’t cross [the] PR line. …
[W]e don’t really care as long as our own needs are filled. Neither did three NFL teams. Neither did two college football programs.
And when one had finally had enough of his crap, somebody else was always willing to step up and take a shot on Incognito. Because he helped fill up the seats and turn on the TVs.
… If you can play, any antisocial behavior will be overlooked or at least rationalized, even if it’s borderline psychotic.
Football at the highest level welcomes sociopaths. As long as they don’t cross certain public relations boundaries that threaten the game’s or a team’s bottom line. Then, and only then, does football have a problem with people like Richie Incognito.
The fact is, we like our violence and we like it with an edge. And if once in a while, some crazy outlier takes his helmet off and swings it at another player or stomps on somebody after the whistle, hey, it’s great cooler talk after that dreary Monday morning status meeting, right? And all of us writers and bloggers have something to tee up and get page hits (with an accompanying video), right? I’m doing it now.
And so, we will wring our hands on the panel shows and act as if people like this are somehow out of the ordinary and not part of our slice of humanity while the game we love keeps rewarding them.
Who’s twisted? The outlaw player? Or all of us who help enable him?
OOOOHHH… Le Fooootball… C’EST MOI….
I mean, c’est the University of Miami, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Penn State University, Rutgers University, all them big-time universities out in front with academic fraud, sadistic coaches, child-predator coaches, booster-money-under-the-table players, professional agents drooling over the team… All of these schools have been grooming the next Richie Incognito…
And think about it. What’s the great crisis in university football today? Empty stadiums, that’s what. Why aren’t people coming to the games? Why, why, why?
Well, one possibility is that they’re disgusted by the comprehensive scumminess, the super-insulting farce, of big-time university football. They’ve got this vague feeling there’s something of a disconnect between what you just read up there in this post and the university.
But another possibility, if the guy I just quoted is right, goes in the opposite direction: The sport isn’t violent and twisted enough.
If he’s right, Richie can turn challenge into opportunity and open Incognito Consulting, a boutique firm specializing in turning sadists who get lost in the crowd into psychopaths who make entire stadiums stand up and cheer. Coming soon to a university near you.
That’s the part that interests us, here, at University Diaries.
Read the rest only if you’ve just gargled with an anti-emetic.